An abbreviated Scroll, partly because of the family gathering today, and partly because my energy is drained by the proverbial flu-like symptoms….
(1) GRRM ON COLBERT. George R.R. Martin visited The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to promote his new book Fire and Blood.
From ET Canada: “George R.R. Martin Shares His Turtle-y Inspiration For ‘Game Of Thrones’ On ‘Colbert’”
Colbert opened the interview by complimenting the “purple turtle” brooch Martin was wearing on his shirt and asking what it meant.
“I love turtles,” Martin said. “That’s how my writing career began, with turtles.”
The 70-year-old explained: “I lived in Bayonne, New Jersey, the federal housing projects there. We were not allowed to have dogs. We were not allowed to have cats. So the only pets I was allowed to have were turtles, little dime store turtles.
“The thing is about those little dime store turtles is that they die very soon,” he continued. “And I couldn’t figure out why they would die, but it wasn’t my fault, so I decided that they were competing for the Turtle Throne. They were killing each other to determine who would be the Turtle King. So that was my first fantasy, Turtle Castle, it preceded Game of Thrones by many years.”
(2) REAL LIFE DRAGON. Inverse says that “NASA Announces Test Flight for SpaceX Crew Dragon”. The uncrewed test is now scheduled for early next year. The first crewed test would follow in a few month’s time.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon took a step closer to reality on Wednesday, as NASA announced that the company will launch its first test flight for the capsule in just two months’ time. The unmanned test will pave the way for a manned test in the summer of 2019, which will see the first American astronauts enter space on board a commercial spacecraft.
The “Demo-1” uncrewed test flight will take place on Monday, January 7, 2019. The Crew Dragon spacecraft will be sent up on a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at Launch Complex 39A. In a press statement, the agency said the launch would provide “data on the performance of the Falcon 9 rocket, Crew Dragon spacecraft, and ground systems, as well as on-orbit, docking and landing operations,” as well as “valuable data toward NASA certifying SpaceX’s crew transportation system for carrying astronauts to and from the space station.”
(3) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and JJ.]
- November 22, 1932 – Robert Vaughn, Actor of Stage and Screen and Director, whose best-known genre work was as Napoleon Solo in the 1960s series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (with a cameo in its short-lived spinoff The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.), but his first genre appearance was in the Roger Corman “gem” Teenage Cave Man in 1958. Other genre roles were in Escape to Witch Mountain, Starship Invasions, The Lucifer Complex, Virus, Hangar 18, Battle Beyond the Stars, Superman III, C.H.U.D. II: Bud the C.H.U.D. (seriously, who penned that title?), Demon Seed, Transylvania Twist, and Witch Academy. (he did do some awful films!) (Died 2016.)
- November 22, 1940 – Terry Gilliam, 78, Oscar-nominated Writer, Actor, and Animator. OGH is going to growl here, but there is no way to be brief when it comes to Terry Gilliam. He’s directed twelves films, of which the vast majority are firmly genre, tending to surrealism, and have garnered him a multitude of awards and nominations. I’ve seen Brazil (which was responsible for his Oscar nod), Time Bandits, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Twelve Monkeys – all five of which were finalists for the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award – and The Fisher King and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Yes, I skipped past his start as the animator for Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which grew out of his love for the children’s series Do Not Adjust Your Set – which had staff of Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Though he largely was the animator in the Python series and films, according to his autobiography, he did occasionally take acting roles – particularly roles no one else wanted, such those requiring extensive makeup. He also co-directed a number of scenes. His most recent are The Brothers Grimm, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Tideland, The Zero Theorem, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Heath Ledger’s last film). SFF author Kage Baker was a big fan of his; she did reviews of Baron Munchausen and Time Bandits for Green Man Review.
- November 22, 1958 – Jamie Lee Curtis, 60, Can we agree that she was the best Scream Queen for her film debut in the 1978 Halloween film in which she played the role of Laurie Strode? No? Well that’s my claim. She followed up with yet more horror films, The Fog and Prom Night. In all of them, she’s the only character that survives. She would reprise the role of Laurie in four sequels, including Halloween H20, Halloween: Resurrection, Halloween II, and Halloween III: Season of the Witch. She shows up in one up of my fav SF films, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension as Sandra Banzai, but you’ll need to see the director’s extended version, as she’s only seen there. Is True Lies really genre? Probably not, but for her performance, Curtis won a Golden Globe Award and a Saturn Award. Damned impressive, I’d say. No, I’m not listing all her films here, as OGH would likely start growling. Suffice to say, she’s had a very impressive career, just in genre works alone.
- November 22, 1984 – Scarlett Johansson, 34, Actor of Stage and Screen, Singer, and Producer. She is best known, perhaps, for her role as the Black Widow in the MCU films, but she has had other genre appearances, including Her (for which she won a Saturn Award), Lucy, Ghost World, the Hugo-nominated The Prestige, The Island, Eight Legged Freaks, The Spirit, Under the Skin, and notably as Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell – a production which was controversial for whitewashing the cast, particularly her character, who was supposed to be Japanese.
(4) COMICS SECTION.
- In this Non Sequitur, we learn how to transform the world.
(5) HERO POSTER. Gizmodo/io9 has highlighted a poster with over 100 movie characters (second in a series of such) and challenged you to try to identify them all (“Good Luck Finding All the References in This Mega Movie Mashup”).
What would happen if over 100 heroes and villains from science fiction got together in a room and just went nuts? A new poster answers that question with one word: insanity.
The poster is called RAID 2: Incident on Line 13, and it’s the second in a series by artists Josan Gonzalez and Laurie Greasley. You may even remember RAID 1, as we featured it on the site. For RAID 2, though, things have gotten even more manic, with a ton of awesome characters kicking the shit out of each other, all together in one beautiful print. Check it out.
Prints both are available at the Hero Complex Gallery website or, you can visit this link to enter a contest for a free copy of RAID 2.
(6) JDA. Well, I’m not going to let this go to my head — of course we look good next to Comicsgaters, whose verbal assaults caused Jon Del Arroz to shut down his Twitter account. “I Guess The File 770 Guys Ain’t So Bad…” [Internet Archive link]
These last two weeks have been hellish to say the least. I haven’t talked about a lot of stuff on the personal front, but if you’re following along on social media, you’ve seen some folk absolutely lose their minds at your favorite humble Hispanic author (me). My understanding is that my leaving twitter has only escalated the situations to where they’re not even coherent anymore….
But you came for the clickbait headline here, and I have to say with all honesty, I prefer the File 770 folk to this current crop of trolls for a couple of reasons.
One, the Filers insults aren’t typically full time. There’s a couple who just are obnoxious, but for the most part they’re very tame compared to the stuff I’ve been getting lately — and moreover, almost all of them voiced concerns over my family’s health and wished good health in recent posts. I actually really appreciate that and was pretty touched they remembered and cared….
(7) TROUBLE IN THE TARDIS? [Item by Olav Rokne.] Rumors are swirling about discontent behind the scenes at Doctor Who. Starlog reported yesterday that new show runner Chris Chibnall may leave the show after an abbreviated season in 2019, reports go on to speculate that Jodie Whittaker may follow suit in solidarity. Given the new life they have breathed into the series, it would be extremely disappointing to see them leave. “Are Jodie Whittaker and the new ‘Doctor Who’ showrunner leaving already?” at NME:
A report in the long-running science-fiction magazine Starburst says that Chibnall is dissatisfied with the way the show is being run behind-the-scenes by the BBC. Whittaker, who previously worked with Chibnall on the hit ITV drama Broadchurch, is said to be leaving the show in sympathy for her friend and colleague.
(8) LION KING. Variety provides background for the Lion King teaser trailer.
The first look at the live-action/CGI remake of “The Lion King” is finally online.
Disney released the teaser trailer on Thursday as part of the Thanksgiving football festivities, replicating the opening scene of the beloved 1994 original animated film.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Olav Rokne, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
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As Godstalk is my Pixel, I thought Pixels could Scroll
Clickity
I have some Thoughts, but I’m half asleep, from turkey, and from doing all the driving. Dora, excellent service dog thiuhmgh she is, asserts her Alternative Cat cred with regard to driving. Some obviously specious nonsense about weighing only nine pounds and less than a foot high at the shoulder, and so not being allowed to even be in the front seat, much less drive.
1
Baby turtles of all species have a mortality rate somewhere north of 90 percent. (We had box turtles. One of the dozen or so babies made it past 2 years old. Most didn’t make it to one year. They’re only about the size of a quarter when they hatch, they’re the color of dirt-and-dead leaves and yellow grass, and the first thing they do. after leaving the nest, is disappear into the undergrowth.)
Happy Thanksgiving, and yea for the Alice’s Restaurant reference 🙂
1) So …Turtles, eh?
There’s a bit of me that wants to assume that his first car was a VW bug, then…
(3) Birthdays
Add to Nov 22 1940, the same day as Terry Gilliam, Roy Thomas. A school teacher who was important to nascent comics fandom in the early 1960s. After Stan Lee, he was the predominant writer of the Marvel Universe in the 1960s and 1970s.. He did long runs of Dr. Strange, the X-Men, and the Avengers (including the Kree-Skrull war). He brought Conan the Barbarian and Star Wars to Marvel. Also work for DC from the 1980s.
1868 — John Nance Garner, who, as Vice President under FDR, said the office “wasn’t worth a bucket of warm piss” (he wasn’t especially genre, I just like quoting the assessment).
1965 — actor Mads Mikkelsen — Casino Royale, Hannibal, Rogue One, Doctor Strange
There are significant deaths on Nov 22, as well. You probably know that in 1963, John Kennedy was killed, but also C. S. Lewis died that same day. Anthony Burgess died 11/22/1993, and musician/actor Scatman Crothers (The Shining, voice actor for Hong Kong Phooey) died in 1986.
Sigh.. Rumours about the demise of the current Doctor Who from vexatious fanboys are just plain annoying. I note that this one even references that the sacred Christmas episode got moved an entire five days! Oh the horror! And this one is sexist to boot — She being a new mother obviously must not be able to devote herself to a career. Would a male actor be asked that question? I think not.
Happy Thanksgiving to USians, and good health to OGH.
(6) sounds like praising with faint damns, except Filers are indeed a very supportive crew …
Msb: (6) sounds like praising with faint damns, except Filers are indeed a very supportive crew …
He’s been over on Camestros’ blog periodically trying to play nice while minimizing all accountability he has for harassing and abusing people. Everything is always other peoples’ fault, he’s just a nice guy that other people attack for no reason, yada yada — you know, the usual bullshit lines that abusers use to try to normalize their abusive behavior.
I suspect that he mistakes Filers’ kindness for gullibility, and he’s hoping to fool some of the people here into believing his rhetoric.
Aldous Huxley also died November 22, 1963. Big death day.
(insomniac comment.)
I too am still awake and only an hour away from my next round of needed trauma meds so I’ll be up at least that long. The Birthday notes are never intended to be completely inclusive lest OGH strangle us. Most days I’ll most likely have six to eight, my list for today has eight I think, and JJ oft times adds some, which is enough, plus y’all do note others in these comments.
My latest biweekly meeting with Jenner, my Nurse Practitioner who’s my PCP, was my fiftieth since coming back from the dead from falling backwards down a staircase and striking my left temple.
Once again we went over my blood pressure and pulse readings which I take three times a day, she adjusted my meds (all nine of them currently) and we discussed how I’m feeling. We’ve still not found anything that even moderates the now fifteen month long continuous headache.
Head trauma of my sort is a tricky, complex and not stable condition which has to closely monitored which is why I get to see a cardiologist and a neurologist again soon as my BP refuses to behave despite taking four BP meds.
Minor birthday nitpick: The character of Laurie Strode was not in Halloween III: Season of the Witch, aka “The One Not About Michael Myers.” JLC did have a minor voice-acting part in the film, but as a different character, and of course Laurie returned in this year’s Halloween.
Rev. Bob says Minor birthday nitpick: The character of Laurie Strode was not in Halloween III: Season of the Witch, aka “The One Not About Michael Myers.” JLC did have a minor voice-acting part in the film, but as a different character, and of course Laurie returned in this year’s Halloween.
I see checking my sources that Halloween III is even strictly speaking within the continuity of the other films. My bad.
@Cat:
Funny thing is, the new movie features some of the Season of the Witch masks. But then, that franchise seems determined to thumb its nose at the very idea of canon and continuity… which is actually kinda neat, IMO. Aside from Rob Zombie’s remake-and-sequel combo, the only thing the rest of the Myers movies can agree on is that the 1978 original’s events happened. The numbered movies take one path, H20 starts another, and the newest one forges a third route.
This is a song called Alice’s Pixel Scroll, and it’s about Alice, and the pixel scroll, but Alice’s Pixel Scroll is not the name of the pixel scroll, that’s just the name of the song, and that’s why I called the song Alice’s Pixel Scroll.
StephenfromOttawa says Aldous Huxley also died November 22, 1963. Big death day. (insomniac comment.)
ISFDB actually does track death dates. I decided not to note them for two reasons: 1) too much bandwidth, and 2) too damn depressing.
I’m off for coffee shortly despite the temperature outside which is now all the way up to seven degrees above zero. Yes we’re having the coldest weather we’ve ever had for this time of year. Mercifully there’s absolutely no wind at all.
I’m fine with not seeing death anniversaries on the Pixel Scroll. I just happen to be aware of the three famous ones on November 22, 1963.
(6) When someone extends an olive branch, I think the gesture should be honored.
It will be interesting to see what he does moving forward.
Also record cold for this date in Ottawa. Currently (8:38 am) -18C, previous record -16.1 in 1972. I’m sitting in Starbucks reading The Rift by Nina Allan, a very interesting novel.
Greg Hullender: (6) When someone extends an olive branch, I think the gesture should be honored.
It’s not actually an olive branch until he publicly apologizes to all of the people he’s harassed and abused.
Right now, it’s just empty words.
@3: Johannsson was also the star of the Woody Allen film Scoop, which is borderline genre. (Non-spoiler because it’s irrelevant: Allen, as an annoying small-time stage magician, has a final appearance doing his patter on Charon’s ferry.) Notable because she’s not just the lead (as in Lucy) but kickass and smart enough to outwit the villain — think of it as the Black Widow movie we don’t have yet.
@6: so why is the WGHSFA getting flak from comics trolls? Did he actually take a stand against one of their excesses?
@Cat Eldridge et al: the record cold is widespread; the Boston Globe reports that Mt. Washington dropped to -26, breaking not only the day’s record (-11) but the record for any day in November (-22). Boston itself is also wicked cold; I’m not finding comparative figures, but today is expected to be the 2nd day in a row where the city doesn’t get over freezing (let’s not talk about the suburbs and exurbs…). Long ago, I told some Australians(*) that Boston didn’t consider it winter until there was a full day that didn’t get over freezing. They said “That’s not winter, that’s bloody Antarctica!”. All is relative — but winter is definitely early this year, after a protracted leaf season.
* They were grumbling about northern Queensland (at latitude ~19) being too cold in August; we were coming home from rafting in what I’d call summer gear.
belated edit: the dead-tree Globe says we didn’t go to 11, which was the official low for T-day — but there were a lot of very cold high-school football games. (It’s the day for traditional rivalries (cross-town or neighboring towns) and IIRC divisional championships.)
” When someone extends an olive branch, I think the gesture should be honored.”
Why? And what olive branch? The only thing he says is that filers aren’t as bad as some of the internet’s most toxic and obnoxious trolls. Eh, no kidding!?
And since his opinion about File 770 has never been very interesting to me, I can’t understand why I should react when (if?) he makes a slight adjustment to it.
@Hampus, if nothing else, any opportunity to divide the opposition is worth taking. But, that aside, it’s important to give people an incentive to change. If our message is that you can’t ever be forgiven for anything, no matter what you do and no matter how much time passes, then we’re not going to have very many supporters after a while.
I agree it’s just a first step, a small one, and it may not mean anything; I’m not naive about this. But if we don’t encourage first steps, we have no reason to expect further steps.
The next step I most want to see is for him to drop his lawsuit.
I don’t want a pixel. I just wanna scroll on my motorcycxel.
Also, what JJ and Hampus said: an actual olive branch starts with the words, “I’m sorry I have hurt so many people though my actions. I take full responsibity for my choices and will do what I can to make amends.” He would then drop his lawsuit and cut off his ties to the white supremacists he pals ariund with.
Anything less is just another cry for attention and/or marketing.
I will go one step further, and note that JDA has literally used fake “olive branches” as a form of targeted harassment aimed at members of this community. He has a consistent pattern of misrepresenting himself as a victim seeking dialogue, bombarding individuals with messages about his skewed narrative, then hurling abuse and incorporating it into his horrible narrative when they ask him to stop.
Saying that anything he says in vaguely the right direction is “a positive step” that somehow deserves to be collectively recognised – including by individuals who have undergone that targeted harassment – is ignoring the actual history here. He’s transparently playing you.
I read Robert Vaugh’s autobiography a few years ago.
He did indeed appear in a lot of horrible films–but he had ever so much fun while doing so.
6) I take it this is a fair representation of what many people think:
What I don’t know is how important the order of events is to folks. From here, it looks like that italicized part might be starting. Or he might be playing you. He might just be unfocused. Who knows? I don’t. But if he’s actually rethinking things, that can be unpleasant. So I hope for the best.
Russ Ault posted on Facebook that filer Lee had passed on last night. I miss her.
Greg:
Breaking all contact with Beale, who celebrated the murder attempt of my friends, is a minimum requirement. Before that, he can rot for all I care.
Have Fun Scrolling the Pixel!
To me, apologies are relatively unimportant. I’ve had homophobes “apologize” to me and then repeat the offense within days. It’s behavior that matters. An apology that follows a behavior change can be a good opportunity for reconciliation and healing, but it needs to be sincere and spontaneous.
@Greg I’m afraid I’m lost. If behaviour is what matters, what behaviour change have you identified from his above post, that should be taken seriously as a “first step” towards change?
If JDA comes to realize that we are better than rightwing low IQ internet , than I say „Ok, good for him, I guess“ and sees what comes out of it, but I dont see it as an olive branch. Especially if he thinks „we“ keep him out of cons, because we cant stand his niceness.
Its not that I care about him either way.
I wonder what the live action part of that CGI movie will be. 😉
Haikuna Pixelata! Or cest la scroll, as the french would say
Greg:
This sounds both suspiciously like the “reasoning” (quotes definitely used advisedly) used to say why we should allow serial harassers back into cons when we know they have neither expressed genuine remorse to their victims nor stopped their behaviour, only whined they deserve a second chance.
It is also as far as I can tell, the polar opposite to this:
I can only find any consistency here if you have some reason to think JDA had made some gesture of actual change before making his demi-concession to us not being horrible (just because we wish no ill on his child?) If so, please don’t keep it secret from the rest of us! Because, in short, I don’t see it yet.
[click]
One thing to bear in mind– if I understand correctly– is a key reason why Comicsgate turned on him is because when VD swooped in to attempt to co-opt/monetize Comicgate to his own advantage, many of the CG people were all, “This guy is an actual racist/white supremacist and that’s too far.” and JDA gave a lot of vocal support to VD. So much of CG were all “JDA is too toxic for us.”
So, yeah, they hounded him out of CG and off twitter, but because they thought he was too extreme and bad for their image.
“There’s a price for absolution on this planet, and it’s called penance.”
—Spider Robinson
Marshall Ryan Maresca: You’d like to think people would react that way, but the real reason for the hostility is simply that VD treated “Comicsgate” like it was his own brand, and others who were trying to monetize it through crowdfunding got pissed off.
Right. My attempts to summarize glossed over this key detail. But my main point is that we shouldn’t look at JDA’s estrangement from CG is because he’d suddenly realized that they were going too far.
Hope you feel better soon Mike!
(6) “File770: Not as bad as Comicsgaters”
That’s a really low bar, and it does comes across more JDA feeling sorry for himself than any attempt to apologise or make amends. (And it is way too early to observe any behavioural change.)
Re: (6), I mean, I guess it’s nice that he’s noticed that File770 is not equivalent to a vicious right-wing harassment campaign, but it’s not exactly a high bar to clear, is it. I’d be a bit more appreciative if he acknowledged his own role in vicious right-wing harassment campaigns rather than declaring that’s he’s just so nice that people have to keep him out of conventions for… reasons. Ah well. Maybe one day he’ll get the rest of the way there.
@Jeff Jones
I’m very sorry to hear that. I always enjoyed and appreciated Lee’s presence and contributions here.
I missed that. Also appreciated Lee’s contributions.
Birthdays, subcategory ScarJo: Ghost World, despite the name, and despite the fact that it was based on a comic book, wasn’t exactly a genre work. It had some geeky elements, but they weren’t SF-related. It was good, though.
Birthdays, subcategory Gilliam: Not a lot of people have seen Zero Theorem, which is too bad, because I thought it was excellent. (Rather surreal, but with Gilliam, that sorta goes without saying.) He had a lot of trouble with distributors, from what I heard, and also problems with the MPAA trying to censor the poster in the US, which didn’t help things go smoothly. But I found it more like Brazil and Twelve Monkeys than anything else he’s done, and for me, that’s a big positive!
Jeff Jones – Russ Ault posted on Facebook that filer Lee had passed on last night. I miss her.
Dammit. I’ll very much miss her contributions here and can only imagine the large hole she’ll leave in the lives of her friends and family.
We will have to work harder without Lee. My deepest sympathies to those who knew her well.
Testing to see if my comments are still blocked cuz my words are so powerful it causes the shaking of the knees of the “tru fans”.
If it’s not, Happy Thanksgiving all!
Yes, they are. Easier on the knees that way.
@Jon Del Arroz
Testing confirms your words are not that powerful. 🙂
And also to you.