Welcome back. You were dearly missed.

Posted November 7, 2005 11:01 PM by hrc

Welcome.

(How did the folks advertising the new film Pride and Prejudice figure out that this blog is a good place to plant ads? Maybe they googled for "Jane Austin," who comes up here from time to time?)

Posted November 7, 2005 11:37 PM by Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey

Ayup.

Posted November 7, 2005 11:45 PM by Alan Bostick

Oh, yes, it's nice to be home. The convention was wonderful, though.

Also, it was lovely to meet you and compare salwar kameezes. (Kameezi? Is there an accepted plural?)

Posted November 7, 2005 11:52 PM by Darice Moore

Salwar kameez have been discussed earlier in this place, and according to CHip: "Janice Gelb reported on her blog recently that she was told 'salwar kameez' is both singular and plural." [Although she is mentioned a bit in fannish places, and her blog occasionally alluded to, I haven't actually found it. But I didn't try all that long & hard.] This "no plural form" is repeated in a few places in the comments, however.

Posted November 8, 2005 1:06 AM by Epacris

we kept passing like those cliched ships.

how's your dual schedule over the next month or so? at the very least we could talk.

Posted November 8, 2005 1:14 AM by sdn

Home again home again ziggity zig.

Posted November 8, 2005 1:29 AM by xeger

For great justice, take off every zig.

Posted November 8, 2005 2:18 AM by Doug

Wlecome back, Teresa and Patrick. And you've already got everything planned for LAcon VI, right?

Posted November 8, 2005 6:38 AM by Serge

And, for those whomight have attended it, how was the "What's that sex scene doing in my fantasy" panel?

Posted November 8, 2005 6:39 AM by Serge

Bill, I bet you the Jane Austen ad wound up here because the movie's producers googled 'dinosaurs and sodomy'.

Posted November 8, 2005 6:52 AM by Serge

I'm glad to see you made it home safe. It was a pleasure meeting you and discussing "Night Travels".

I attended the "sex scene" panel. It fluctuated between insightful and hilarious to incredibly relevant and hilarious. Oh, and did I mention hilarious?

Posted November 8, 2005 7:23 AM by Irene Ferris

Thanks, Irene. Still, the very subject seemed to imply that sex doesn't belong in fantasy. Anway, how many references of 'throbbing manhoods' did the panel throw around?

Posted November 8, 2005 7:39 AM by Serge

Welcome back!

Posted November 8, 2005 7:41 AM by James Goodman

Epacris, thank you. I should have looked it up, but it was late and I was tired, so I fumbled.

Posted November 8, 2005 8:55 AM by Darice Moore

Fall colors are looking great this year in Inwood. The weather is unseasonably warm as well.

Thst said, there's a predicted 25% higher than average snowfall this winter. Having moved from a land with 2 seasons, wet and brown, I think I'll actually enjoy the snow this year.

Posted November 8, 2005 9:39 AM by Josh Jasper

Shouldn't you start in the beginning, go all the way to the end, and then stop?

---L.

Posted November 8, 2005 9:49 AM by L.N. Hammer

I'll bet you had a swell time. I'm equally sure it's swell to be in your own space. I'll bet Arthur was delighted to have you home.

Posted November 8, 2005 12:16 PM by Madeleine Robins

Serge--Of course sex belongs in fantasy. In fact, most written sex scenes read as pure fantasy--especially if written by men. (That was also discussed during this panel)

There was much discussion of usage of sex to move the plot along instead of just for gratuitious reasons. It also discussed direct proportional relationship between breast size of the woman pictured on the book jacket and the lack of sex betwixt the covers.

I recall no 'throbbing manhoods' but think there was at least a bushel of 'heaving bosoms'.

Posted November 8, 2005 12:35 PM by Irene Ferris

Oh, it's THAT kind of fantasy that was discussed on that panel, Irene?

Posted November 8, 2005 12:46 PM by Serge

Hee! It came up in passing. Several times.

Oi. That came out all kinds of wrong, didn't it?

In all seriousness, truly a great panel. There were several outstanding panels I attended but I'd say this was one of the top three.

Posted November 8, 2005 3:42 PM by Irene Ferris

Just pulling your leg, Irene. Heh heh heh...

Posted November 8, 2005 3:52 PM by Serge

"In fact, most written sex scenes read as pure fantasy--especially if written by men."

As opposed to the gritty realism of Nora Roberts. :)

Don't get me wrong: I read and enjoy her stuff, but it's no more realistic, generally speaking, than the wish fulfillment goofiness written by the guy who's never touched a woman. It is, in fact, the exact same wish fulfillment goofiness, just aimed at a different target audience with different wish fulfillment criteria.

I'd suggest that your sentence works fine without the end clause.

Glad to see you back, Patrick & Teresa!

Posted November 8, 2005 3:57 PM by Patrick Weekes

As expected, soon after Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings came out, the local Best Buy store had a porno parody of it available for sale. No, I didn't watch it. I don't watch that stuff. (Really. Honest.) But I got a kick out of the backcover that refered to, what else? throbbits...

Posted November 8, 2005 4:12 PM by Serge

Serge, was it "Lord of the G-Strings"? Because that one was hilarious. My wife actually made me stop when we hit it rolling through late-night television (Skinemax, I believe), and we ended up watching about a half hour of it.

Stupid sex scenes, but absolutely hilarious for post-midnight viewing, and at least a third of the humor was intentional.

Posted November 8, 2005 6:11 PM by Patrick Weekes

Non sequitur: I was given a t-shirt a few years ago with the following emblazoned across the chest:

Lord of the Onion Rings.

I get all manner of strange looks and double-takes when I wear it.

Posted November 8, 2005 6:57 PM by Linkmeister

Welcome back!

Posted November 8, 2005 8:07 PM by rhandir

(waves welcome-back banner)

Posted November 8, 2005 9:07 PM by Fiendish

Welcome home. I can promise you that the garden has been well and truly watered while you were gone.

Posted November 8, 2005 11:04 PM by julia

epacris -- Janice LJ's as "smofbabe". I went back to the relevant section (her round-the-world trip to work in India + London, and go to Eastercon, i.e. last half of March 2005); didn't find the item I referred to, but may not have gone far enough back and don't speak enough LJ to know whether it allows free-text searching.

The part of the sex panel I got to after oversleeping was good, but Patrick also gets points for answering Modesitt's panel's question of why fantasy has all this folk music and no symphonies or operas; a bard, he said, is a walking expository lump.

Posted November 8, 2005 11:44 PM by CHip

CHip, ta muchly; my priorities are pared back right now: in a few more days I'll be on a big red & white sea-ferry steaming under the Harbour Bridge out Sydney Heads and hanging a right through our small section of the Pacific down-coast to cross the wild Bass Strait and reach the green mountains of Van Dieman's Land, where the Tasmaniacs live.
There I plan to find a spot where I can gaze out across the Southern Ocean, breathe the Roaring Forties bringing air from the South Atlantic via the Cape of Good Hope across the Indian Ocean, chilled on the way by the Antarctic ice sheet, and rest.

So I'm panicking trying to get everything done first :)

Posted November 9, 2005 4:55 AM by Epacris

Yes, Patrick, I think the title indeed was Lord of the G-strings.

A few years ago, Wolfgang Petersen was heard to want to make a TV mini-series based on Wagner's Ring Cycle. That would have been interesting. Had it been successful, I can think of a few titles for a porno parody. Good taste makes me refrain from uttering them.

Posted November 9, 2005 6:05 AM by Serge

Would that be Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King, a TV miniseries based on Wagner's Ring Cycle, written by Diane Duane and Peter Morwood, by any chance?

Posted November 9, 2005 7:57 AM by Jen Birren

I doubt it would have been a very mini mini-series. The total Ring Cycle lasts over nineteen hours. (And they have no word for 'fluffy', yes, yes, all right, we know.) That's considerably more than a 22-ep full season of hour-long episodes - let alone a six-ep mini-series - allowing for ad breaks and the chap with the deep voice who says "Previously, on 'Das Rheingold'" at the start of each episode.
At least you can only have a maximum of four wisdom teeth extracted...

Posted November 9, 2005 8:15 AM by ajay

I really, really want at least a button that says "walking expository lump"

Posted November 9, 2005 8:28 AM by julia

Epacris, I always liked Grote Reber's reasons why he moved to Tasmania:

"The weather is nice, and the electron temperature in the ionosphere is low."

Posted November 9, 2005 8:31 AM by Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey

As far as I know, Jen, Petersen's Ring Cycle would have been the actual Wagner opera, but without the singing. Maybe they had gotten the idea that it's feasible from Craig Russell's long comic-book adaptation. But ajay has a point. It couldn't have been made into a mini-series. A maxi-series. Still the length probably wouldn't have been the real problem. There's this little thing in the plot about the hero's parents being brother and sister.

Who could have played the parts? Brian Blessed as Wotan?

Anyway, thanks for letting us know about that upcoming SciFi Channel mini-series. I'm sure it'll be better than Dungeons and Dragons 2: The Wrath of the (Moth-eaten) Dragon God.

Posted November 9, 2005 8:47 AM by Serge

... and speaking of Wagner porn-parodies, my favorite is the venerable "Long Swift Sword of Siegfried", which I saw as an innocent young college student at a friend's party. He had a huge collection of 8mm porn (much of it quite tame by today's standards) which he would bring out from under his bed and show at parties. He had mail-ordered so many films that one of the companies sent him Helga the inflatable German shepherd as a bonus.

Posted November 9, 2005 10:37 AM by Tracie Brown

"...Helga the inflatable German shepherd..."

Oh my.

Posted November 9, 2005 10:50 AM by Serge

Taken was 20 hours as broadcast, which means about 13 hours of screentime. It was done as two hours per night, M-F two weeks in a row.

Of course that was Sci-Fi Channel, which had the dubious advantage of great flexibility due to having no viewer base to speak of...

But if they want to use Wagner's script without his music, that will be SUBSTANTIALLY shorter anyway. Even with establishing shots and credits and so on, speaking takes SO much less time than singing (except maybe for patter songs, of which there are none in Wagner*) that I doubt it would run more than about 8-10 hours even as broadcast.

*do I dare hope that Mike Ford will treat us to some Niebelungenspatter?

Posted November 9, 2005 11:21 AM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Niebelungenspatter from Mike... Are we going to be hearing about huge schwanschtukers?

Wasn't there a Bugs Bunny parody of the Ring Cycle? Heck, there was one of "The Barber of Seville", which ended with Elmer Fudd in drag and willingly marrying Bugs, so why not do Wagner?

Posted November 9, 2005 11:37 AM by Serge

Ahhh, porn titles. Back when I was a wee lassie, navigating the then-vice ridden Times Square, I used to laugh out loud at the many ingenious titles.

It was hard to choose between "Silence of the Gams" and "Erectnaphobia" as my favorite titles.

Of course my husband, when told about this topic, immediately countered with one he saw in the 80s: Ramboned.

Good times.

Posted November 9, 2005 11:55 AM by Chryss

And let's not forget Flesh Gordon, Chryss, which has, among many distinctions, the fact that Star Trek fan Bjo Trimble worked on this immortal example of cinema.

Posted November 9, 2005 12:09 PM by Serge

Oh, gay porn has a takeoff on just about everything you can imagine. The Hole (about a videotape that turns you gay if you watch it); Drill Bill (bright yellow box, guy wearing only an eyepatch); Sticky Business (need I say more?); Big Guns (a porn takeoff on Top Gun); and I think I saw White Men Can't Hump too.

Not a movie parody, but there was also one called Mikey Likes It (tagline: "Do it to Mikey...he likes everything!")

Posted November 9, 2005 12:28 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Home. Still dead tired, but home. Julia, thanks for the word on meanwhile-rain; I forgot to check, and it's oddly difficult to find old weather reports.

Arthur was morose, logy, and unkempt when we first got home; but then he perked up, tidied his fur, went for a run in his ball, accepted a snack of mesclun salad bits, and afterward retired to his igloo with something very like an air of satisfaction. This has been the pattern for several homecomings now, so I'm forced to conclude that the peabrained critter actually misses me.

The panel on sex scenes in fantasy could have run another hour with no loss of momentum. While we were waiting to start, Jennifer mentioned Bryan's wonderful bits of fiction [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] in the comment thread of my post about Scooter Libby's novel and Republican dirty books in general. Naturally, I hadn't thought to print out any of that material. Very sad. But then it occurred to me that the hotel had wireless, so I asked the audience whether someone could loan me their laptop. One did, though I'm ashamed to admit I don't remember her name. It was one of those lovely moments when you realize this really is the future. Alas, we never did get around to reading examples of good and bad sex scenes, so Bryan's bits didn't get a public airing; but having the computer did allow me to read off Lauren Collins' excerpts from Republican sex scenes.

I have decided that ARRAGGHRRORWR! is a Word of Power.

Darice, and the salwar kameez: not only did we look splendid at the banquet, but we could spot each other. That was a fun conversation.

Posted November 9, 2005 12:32 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Xopher, the best porn parody title I've ever heard of was one of John Waters's favorites: Oklahomo!

It was, of course, a musical.

[I'm still ROT-13ing my domain name, because it seems to have been blacklisted. Is anybody else having this problem? Have I somehow given offense?]

Posted November 9, 2005 1:31 PM by Andrew Willett

My favorite pornonymous takeoff was Toothless People, about women who get their teeth extracted to improve their fellatio quotient. I never figured out how they did those special effects. The other porn special effects I never figured out featured an actress playing siamese twins. I mercifully forget where she was "joined", but it looked horribly realistic.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:20 PM by Dan Hoey

Serge, there was indeed a Looneytoons Wagner parody, with Bugs Bunny as the Maiden, and Elmer Fudd as the Hero. It's called, "What's Opera, Doc?" and may be the best thing Chuck Jones ever did, IMHO. Bugs dies in the end, and his last line is something like, "What did you expect, a happy ending?"

Posted November 9, 2005 2:48 PM by Magenta Griffith

I think I remember that Bugs Bunny cartoon, Magenta. I have this image of Bugs theatrically falling dead, with both hands over his heart. Elmer tries to pry Bugs's hands apart and, when he succeeds, Bugs lets out a loud eeek!!! and we see he's wearing a bra.

They just don't make cartoons like that anymore.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:56 PM by Serge

Wasn't there a Bugs Bunny parody of the Ring Cycle?

As noted earlier, there are two Wagnerian Bugs Bunnies, both of which involve Bugs dressed as a Valkyrie: the better known is Chuck Jones's What's Opera, Doc? but there's also Friz Freleng's wartime toon Herr Meets Hare, in which Our Hero takes a wrong turn (you should all know where by now) and ends up in the Black Forest, interrupting Hermann Goering's hunting trip. In addition to Brunhilde, Bugs appears in this one as Hitler (right after the Reichsmarschall has called his boss some naughty things) and Stalin.

Posted November 9, 2005 2:58 PM by John M. Ford

"...Helga the inflatable German shepherd..."

Careful! Every time that phrase* appears in a public forum the Rapture Index rachets up a few points.

Posted November 9, 2005 5:24 PM by Stefan Jones

Stefan, I think the recent dinosaur/sodomy thread pretty much ratcheted the Rapture Index thru the roof already.

Posted November 9, 2005 5:36 PM by Serge

Hmmm . . .

Inflatable dinosaurs . . .

Posted November 9, 2005 6:20 PM by Stefan Jones

>>>>Darice, and the salwar kameez: not only did we look splendid at the banquet, but we could spot each other. That was a fun conversation.

And the two of you were positively glittering with all the shiny...

Posted November 9, 2005 7:50 PM by Irene Ferris

When I was in high school I read one of those "Best Plays of 19__" anthologies that included three one act plays that were shown together (I can't remember the name now, but one section was called something "The Sound of Pigeon's Wings.") The first act was hilarious: a playwright arguing with a producer over the wording of a sex scene where the author had tried to use dialog that women might actually use. The producer felt that saying "cute" and "tack hammer" instead of "Blood-gorged pole of muscle" would make the male audience leave the theater in droves

Posted November 10, 2005 7:34 AM by Bruce E. Durocher II

CHip:
...Patrick also gets points for answering Modesitt's panel's question of why fantasy has all this folk music and no symphonies or operas...

A Wizard of Earth-Sea.

If that's not a symphony (or more likely, an opera), then what is?

Posted November 10, 2005 9:03 PM by jhlipton

jhlipton: I missed pieces of the panel due to settling an obligation; Patrick can tell you whether your example came up while I was out. (I don't remember an instance in that book myself, but I haven't read it in a very long time.)

Posted November 12, 2005 11:51 PM by CHip

jhlipton: the panel wasn't metaphoric, on the lines of "why are fantasy stories structured like folk music rather than like operas;" it was quite literal on "why do the stories all have solitary lutenists rather than pseudo-medieval versions of the Boston Pops and the Bayreuth Festival?" The answer is not all that difficult, if you're actually familiar with both fantasy writing (in its considerable breadth) and the history of music (ditto). And even easier if you don't believe that some forms of music are more gooder than other kinds.

Posted November 13, 2005 12:21 AM by John M. Ford