1984-1986

• Randy, David and I drive down to Los Angeles for a long weekend, staying at Randy's pro photographer friend John's place in Hollywood.  John knows Andy Summers from The Police.  We take a "demo comic" of one of my properties to the hotel where WorldCon is being held.  Our intent is to slip the demo to Wendi & Richard Pini.  We find their hotel room, but they've already left to return home.
• I take an after-school job at the AMC Old Mill 6 movie theater in Mountain View.  Free movies and a paycheck too.  Sweet deal.  I take Samantha, the cute brunette, to Amadeus for our first date.  Over the course of the next year, I'll witness all sorts of cinematic wonder, from David Lynch's Dune to James Cameron's The Terminator.  From Back to the Future to 2010 to Buckaroo Banzai.  And while Weird Science is more of a John Hughes teen comedy, it nonetheless falls into my sci-fi milieu.  And staring at Kelly LeBrock for 94 minutes is hardly a chore.
• Alan Parker's Birdy is a cinematic revelation to me, between the incredible cinematography and Peter Gabriel's score.
  
• I continue to write.  Whenever honors English assignments warrant (or rather, when they don't specifically forbid), I use sci-fi and fantasy as a theme.  I continue to tweak my postmodern rock novella, and start on another - this one a psychological thriller, probably inspired by Dreamscape.  I also publish a comic strip, Zingo, in the Palo Alto Campanile newspaper for two years.
• In the spring of '85, Samantha, my buddy Konrad and I spend the weekend at Randy's apartment.  We all take shrooms and proceed to share an incredible 8-hour trip.  Sex on a waterbed on shrooms is an experience I will never forget.
• Although A-ha becomes a mighty MTV one-hit pop icon in the US, I'm impressed with the entirety of Hunting High and Low, and follow the band for a few more albums.
  
• During the summer of 1985, several Palo Alto friends and I shoot Project, the supernatural thriller I began writing in Santa Cruz.  We get it in the can and school starts before I can edit.  I finish post production right after graduation in 1986, and submit it to a young directors' series for PBS.  It is broadcast.
  
• Ridley Scott's Legend is released.  I am blown away by the production design and cinematography, and it becomes one of my go-to films for visual inspiration.  Between that and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (which is a fictionalized account of my own senior year), I develop a crush on Mia Sara.  I find Ladyhawke to be solid medieval fantasy with an unfortunate disco muzak score.
  
• 1984-1986 music: I see Howard Jones, Love and Rockets, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Marillion, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Lou Reed, U2 and The Stranglers in concert.  It's a good time for alternative music.  David Beach and I start a mostly electronic music project called Pig SynoNym.  I get into Joy Division, New Order, Bauhaus and Tones on Tail.  I'm big into Shriekback and Depeche Mode, and Simple Minds and Tears For Fears are everywhere.  Fellow high school writer Scott Burgess turns me onto Japan, Bill Nelson, David Sylvian and that crowd.  I embrace the Cocteau Twins and their ilk on 4AD records.  Fellow music addict Gordon Kelley turns me onto Moev and Dalis Car.  My musical palette grows by leaps and bounds.  David get's me into The Church.
  
• Randy moves to El Rancho Milagro, an orphanage in Ensinada, Mexico.  He will spend the next two years constructing dorms and doing maintenance.
  
• 1986: I take my brother Gavin to Transformers.  I sort of missed out on the whole transforming vehicle craze, and he's far more into the toys and the mythos than I, but it is nonetheless Orson Welles' last film (one other project was released posthumously).  
• Samantha and I take a road trip north to Vancouver BC for Expo '86.  It's a great adventure to be out and about on our own.  On the way, We fall in love with Washington State.  This will be important later.
• Flushed with the success of Project, I tackle the next logical film - a medieval fantasy.  A totally rational and level-headed decision.  By this time I'm working swing shift at Kinko's, and I copy my scripts for free.
  
• After a short hiatus from RPGs, I join Samantha's group at Foothill College.  The game is a homebrew system and setting, run by a woman who is probably the best improvisational storyteller I've met thus far.  New friendships are made, as are preparations to shoot Kings, our medieval fantasy film.
  
• Highlander comes out.  I eat it up, warts and all.  Aliens proves to be exemplary, successfully merging the sci-fi, horror, action and war genres into one tight, well-made movie.  "They'll never top this," I think.  And I'm right.

1980-1984

• My dad moves out in January of 1980.  It's a surprise to everyone.  I'm devastated.  Turns out he's been miserable for years and doesn't have the tools to express or cope with his frustration.  Later he'll delve into the Bay Area self-help movement and transform himself into a much better person, but at this point, all we know is that he's gone.  My mom does what she can to keep us afloat - quite literally.  That winter sees the worst rain in Santa Cruz in years, and the liquefied hill comes down on our house and in through my sister's bedroom window.  I bring hot tea to my mom, who is hip-deep in mud, trying to divert the water away from the house with a shovel, with only our realtor Mary for support.  It will be some time before I can forgive my father for, as I saw it, deserting us.
  
• Saturday morning cartoons now include Thundarr the Barbarian, Space Ghost, the new Superfriends and Godzilla.  We're growing up.
  
• I begin hanging out with the Beach brothers a lot, creating improv comedy "radio" broadcasts that we record on cassette and sell to our friends at school.  We spend a lot of time together, between school and our church community, and with Adam a year older and David a year younger (and their adopted sister Lyn the same age as my sister), I pretty much become the middle Beach brother.  Adam introduces me to the wonders of Dr. Demento, National Lampoon, jazz and KISS.  My mom is none too fond of my exposure to the latter, believing the urban legend that KISS stands for "Knights In Satan's Service".  She'd overcome that programming (and the sensationalized press regarding D&D) later.
  
• During 4th, 5th and 6th grades, I begin my freelance art career, drawing rad pictures of dragons and superheroes for classmates... for a price.  I spend some of this filthy lucre plugging quarters into the arcade machines.  Defender, Asteroids, Pac Man, Space Invaders, Battlezone get most of my attention.  I also start designing my own take on Wacky Packs. 
  
• Due to financial necessity, my mom moves us to a rental house in Aptos.  My dad resurfaces and tries to make up for months of lost time by doing fun things with us kids.  He and I get our NAUI skin diving certification, going on dives off of Monterey.  We go for weekend visits at the sailboat he's living on in Santa Cruz harbor.  He takes me to see The Empire Strikes Back.  We sit with his brother, Russell, who is stoned out of his mind and really enjoying the movie.  I've now been collecting Star Wars action figures for a couple years, and send in cereal box tops for the special edition Boba Fett and Bossk figures.  I get the Millennium Falcon for my 12th birthday.  My crush on Carrie Fisher becomes the standard by which all of my other crushes are measured.  She's probably the only (and I mean only) reason I see Under the Rainbow multiple times.
• The aforementioned uncle Russell gives me a boxed Dungeons & Dragons basic set for Christmas 1980.  I crack it open but am not able to grasp the arcane rules.  It will sit on my bookself until a junior high buddy re-introduces me to D&D in 1981.
  
• I start making 8mm films with my friend Mike Day.  They start with miniature effects like blowing up Hot Wheels cars with fire crackers, and eventually increase in scope to all out slasher and action fare.  I begin formulating a story based on my Blue Shark comic, set in space.
  
• For Easter 1980, I am given ELO - A New World Record.  It changes my life.  I become an Electric Light Orchestra junkie.  It's my gateway band.  From here on out I will become extremely passionate about music.  A lot of that will have to do with a chance meeting while camping at Nisene Marks over Labor Day weekend with my dad and his girlfriend, Katherine.
  
• So, yeah, Labor Day weekend, 1980.  We're camping in Nisene Marks, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, when we meet a fellow hiker.  He's 21, a local photographer, with long hippie hair.  Randy would become my big brother, my mentor, and best man both times I married.  Meanwhile my mom is dating a widower with two kids around my age, and we spend a lot of time together on camping trips and the like.  I continue developing my scifi movie concept.
  
• In 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark comes out.  David Beach and I are there.  We move from the rental house to a fourplex.  I go to visit my dad and Katherine one weekend and dad takes me to see both Outland and Excalibur.  My mom is furious.  Randy introduces me to Pink Floyd, Van Halen, David Bowie, The Police and Peter Gabriel.  I completely geek out in Dragonslayer.  Clash of the Titans allows me to relive the classic Ray Harryhausen fantasies of my earlier childhood.
• A junior high friend asks me if I've ever played Dungeons & Dragons.  I show him the boxed set sitting on my shelf.  He shows me how to play and runs a short adventure for me.  I'm hooked.  David Beach and I set up elaborate Halloween theatrics at his house.  This year, we set up a fantasy tavern in their carport, dressed as medieval fantasy heroes, and offer to guide trick-or-treaters down the many steps and across the "drawbridge" to the front door, battling monsters (our friends in rubber masks) all the way.  I am bitten by the theater bug.  My buddy Brent talks his mom into getting us into Conan.  At 13, we're absolutely okay with the swordplay, gushing blood and plentiful boobs. 
• 1982: Here comes Tron.  I'm floored, not necessarily by the execution, but by the promise of digital effects.  E.T. comes out.  I see it several times, identifying not only with Elliott's discovery but with Michael's responsibility as the older brother and protector in a single-mom household.  Poltergeist scares the crap out of me, and I go back to the theater several times as well.  Since he's over 17, Randy acts as my guardian and takes me to see The Road Warrior.  I'm smitten by the setting, the production design and the stunt work.  And it doesn't hurt that Virginia Hey is also featured in Playboy about the same time (warning: link may contain breastesses).  Having a big brother who has a subscription to Playboy and can supply the beer is a great setup.  I think at this point my mother has given up trying to protect me from the horrors of rated R movies, as evidenced by her taking me to Blade Runner.  I see Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan at least five times in the theater with my buddies.  We also take in The Beastmaster, and revel in the gore and the boobs.  I have a huge crush on Tanya Roberts.  The Dark Crystal ignites a whole new part of my storytelling brain.  I also manage to see Heavy Metal and Escape From New York on cable.
  
• I begin reading Ray Bradbury.  I devour his books, reading them repeatedly.  I begin to study special effects techniques in film.  Randy introduces me to Missing Persons and Berlin.  I begin to listen to Frank Zappa and the Surf Punks. 
  
• Throughout 8th grade, I'm involved in a group playing RPGs at lunch.  D&D is soon replaced by Traveller, Boot Hill, Gamma World and Top Secret.  I also begin to write short fiction, inspired by the ever-increasing amount of science fiction and fantasy material available.  And I continue to act onstage.   I'm given the first Actor of the Year award at Aptos Jr. High School upon graduation.
  
• During the summer of '82, David Beach and I enroll in an intensive theater workshop through San Jose State University.  We stay at my grandparents' home in San Jose, and there we discover MTV.  Of course at this time, it's pretty much Men At Work and Quarterflash in heavy rotation.  But it does introduce me to Kate Bush and U2.  Randy takes me to my first rock concert, Humans at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz.  Some friends and I start a combat sport where we make "armor" out of cardboard and athletic padding and garbage can lids, and try to hit each other with Whiffle bats.  An early form of LARPing?  A subconscious extension of SCA combat?  Both entities being unknown to us, we have fun with it for a summer.
  
• In late 1982, Randy, David Beach and I publish Zingo Magazine, a comedy comic 'zine.  Randy pays out of pocket for the print run and we sell individual copies to our friends and classmates upon its release in early 1983.  I start developing my own fantasy roleplaying game, based on my short fiction.
• My dad marries Katherine on New Year's Eve, '82.  My mom marries her boyfriend Robert in June of '83.
• 1983: We move from the fourplex in Aptos to a rental house in Santa Cruz, on the golf course at Pasatiempo.  Randy takes me to a midnight double feature of The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Hunger. In the latter film, I'm introduced to Bauhaus and lesbian sex (with Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve, no less).  Later that year, I breach curfew staying out all night at a cast party for the school musical, get completely wasted and crash out at Randy's apartment.  I am grounded for the last 8 weeks of school.  I end up with pneumonia, which makes socializing a moot point anyway. But I am allowed a furlough for opening day of Return of the Jedi.  Although not the story quality of the first two Star Wars movies, I am satisfied with this ending.  I finally see Alien in my scifi lit class.  
• I read a lot of Stephen King, but quit after finishing Cujo - pissed that he killed the kid.  I start listening to Euro techno bands like Kraftwerk and Yello, while drawing - and collecting - more comics.  Frank Miller's run on Daredevil and the Claremont/Smith era of the Uncanny X-Men are tops on my list.
  
• By 1983, I am pretty good at the Star Wars arcade game, and have the number 2 high score on the Tempest machine at the Chuck E. Cheese's in Capitola.  Wire frame 3D for the win!
  
• During the annual summer visit with my dad, I volunteer at the Palo Alto Children's Theatre, helping with some set building and other duties.  I'm enlisted to help raise a big parachute as an awning over the outdoor theater, where they are staging Romeo & Juliet.  A cute brunette girl holds the ladder I'm on.  This will be important later...
  
• 1984: Randy and David and I see Berlin in concert.  Talk Talk opens.  Later that summer, Missing Persons.  Seeing Terry Bozzio drum live in person inspires me and I write a novella set in a dark future with clones and corporate warfare and rock music.  It might be influenced a bit by Streets of Fire, and it would probably be called "cyberpunk" if the term existed yet in our lexicon.  But William Gibson's Neuromancer wouldn't be published until July, and wouldn't reach me until college.  I also begin writing a supernatural thriller with characters based on my theater friends at Aptos High School.  Ghostbusters is released.  I buy in.
• I form my first garage band with David Beach, Ed Havens and Randy Rhodes (not my mentor Randy).  Flying Pigs, named after Pink Floyd imagery from Animals.  We crank out a few songs and plan a horror movie tie-in with the band.  That core lineup will fragment into many other garage lo-fi projects, many with a porcine motif.
  
• Late that summer, there is a change of custody.  Gavin, Sara and I go to live with dad and Katherine in Palo Alto.  I look forward to the change of scenery and the opportunity to make new friends (read: new girls).  I enroll in Palo Alto High School as an incoming junior.  In theater class, I meet a cute brunette, who I later discover was the same cute brunette who had been holding my ladder at the Children's Theatre.  Things start off tentatively, but by November we're a couple.

1976-1979

• Because the house we were building on the side of a dark and muddy hill in Aptos is not yet finished by the time school starts, we live in a trailer at the KOA in Watsonville.  My brother Gavin comes along in October of '76, and I am a latch-key kid for the first time in my life.  I come home from the last stop on the bus route, let myself into the trailer, make a snack and watch Dark Shadows reruns before tackling any homework. I start to fall more deeply in love with comic books, as they are often my only source of escape.  May of 1977 comes and goes, and I am only peripherally aware that a major cultural event has occurred.  We move to another campground, this one in Felton, and between swimming lessons and Slurpees and more superhero action figures, an infatuation with the Teen Titans comic series blossoms (ironically during their most haphazard and rudderless period).
  
• My third grade teacher, Mr. Miles, reads The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe aloud to his class.  I'm hooked instantly, and read the Narnia series of books over the next couple years.
  
• It is during the summer of 1977 that I discover Star Wars, mostly through my cousins, who had begun to collect all things Star Wars, primarily the comics (as that summer there is little in the way of toys ready for sale).  Of course, like any nine year old boy, I fall in love with the mythology and the world, sight literally unseen, and began the campaign to get my parents to take me to the movie.  Because of the whole trying-to-build-a-house-while-living-in-a-trailer-and-working thing my parents were doing, it isn't until September or October of 1977 that my folks finally take me to see it.  Fortunately, this is a time when a blockbuster like Star Wars (and you notice I use the title that was used on the marquees, not the subtitle, A New Hope, which was retroactively tagged onto everything) could stay in theaters for an entire year on a first run.  Needless to say, it is a paradigm shift in my sci-fi consciousness, and sets a high bar for everything to come.  From then on, the Star Wars mythology would join Star Trek and the Marvel & DC superhero canon as the basic building blocks of my geekdom.
  
• We move into our not-yet-complete house in Aptos just before Christmas, '77.  By this time, I'm already writing and drawing my own comic series about the crew of the futuristic submarine Blue Shark, with myself as captain and my friends rounding out the crew.  By 1978, I'm addicted to Mad and Cracked, and draw my own movie parody comics as well.  I hang out with my bestest pal Josh Geller, devouring Battlestar Galactica, The Incredible Hulk and Buck Rogers.  Erin Gray makes me feel funny, like when we used to climb the rope in gym class.  I also start to notice one or more Charlie's Angels, and develop an animated crush on the female sidekick in Plastic Man.  Don't judge me.  Y'all think Daphne's hot too.  The first Micronauts begin to infiltrate my collection of toys.
• Sometime in this period, I catch THX-1138 on TV at my cousin's house.  The computer control room set looks like every office my dad worked in.
  
• Josh and I have sleepovers in a pup tent on my back deck, running a power cord for the little black and white TV.  We stay up late watching Saturday Night Live, amused by the antics of hosts like Steve Martin, Eric Idle and Carrie Fisher.
  
• I continue my love affair with classic fantasy adventure movies, like the Sinbad films, Jason and the Argonauts, pretty much anything Ray Harryhausen did effects for.  Many of these classics are shown in the Rio Del Mar Elementary School cafeteria in an after school entertainment program for fifty cents (including popcorn).
  
• 1978: I meet Adam and David Beach through school and church.  This will become important later.  Also, Josh gets an Atari 2600.  We play lots of Space Invaders and Missile Command, and spend an obscene amount of time listening to Steve Martin comedy records.  My parents take us to a drive-in movie and I manage to completely ignore what's on our screen in favor of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which I watch without sound.  That summer, I believe a man can fly.
  
• 1979: Alien is released.  It's rated R.  My parents won't let me see it.  My friend David Cordero has the alien action figure (what was Kenner thinking, marketing a toy based on a rated R movie?).  I am jealous of it.  Star Trek: The Motion Picture arrives - I am there.  I am not entirely thrilled.  Also, my parents take me out of public school and send me to St. Francis boys' school in Watsonville (currently a co-ed high school, back then a boys-only middle school).  I am Catholic for a month, an altar boy even.  Unable to handle the extreme dogma and punitive atmosphere, I get my parents to put me back at Rio Del Mar, where I'm suddenly "the new kid" again, even though I'd been going there since third grade. 
  
• Quark, Man From Atlantis and Project UFO are on my regular viewing schedule.  The crew of my comic book retrofit the Blue Shark to make it space worthy.  You can see where this is going...

1973-1976

• 1973 is a big year: my sister Sara is born, and we move from suburban San Jose to another part of suburban San Jose.  It's a quiet cul-de-sac including other families with kids my age, a block away from my first school.  From '73 to '76, a real geek awakening occurs.  On my 5th birthday, my grandfather gives me a crisp $5 bill, with which I purchase my first G.I. Joe and extra outfit (and have a few cents change left) from the local Toys 'R' Us.  Super Friends, Underdog and Speed Racer make their presence known.  And both the original Star Trek series and the animated Star Trek series are in my standard rotation, while Syd & Marty Krofft productions like Wonderbug, Land of the Lost, Lidsville and H.R. Puffinstuff are standard viewing on Saturdays.
  
• I continue my obsession with all things aquatic, influenced by hours of Sea Hunt and Flipper reruns and The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, and the fact that I was swimming like a fish by age two (and would continue to take lessons throughout my childhood).  Invariably, the first outfit purchased for a G.I. Joe type toy would be the SCUBA set, and he'd start having adventures in the bath that very day.
  
• I pick up a fascination with classic horror films due to the presence of Bob Wilkins on Bay Area television, and to my dad's Saturday afternoon viewing preference (when we're not out sailing on Lake Vasona).  I also develop a liking for Toho giant rubber monster movies, especially Gamera.
  
• Interesting juxtaposition - Perhaps due to my dad's experience with military service, or to the bad taste in everyone's mouth from the Vietnam conflict, we are not allowed any toy guns.  No replicas made of plastic or wood, no cap guns, not even brightly colored squirt guns (we had other water weapons, but none of them were "gun" shaped).  Yet I had a collection of little green army men, and G.I. Joe sure came with his own arsenal of plastic weaponry.  In hindsight, I can understand not wanting your kid to simulate first-person gunplay, but I was definitely doing my share of third-person shooting with my action figures.  Perhaps there's a reason that to this day, I prefer third-person action/RPG videogames as opposed to first-person shooters.
  
• I often visit my dad at work.  He's a computer programmer and data analyst in what will eventually become Silicon Valley.  I marvel at the big, spinning wheels of magnetic tape on refrigerator-sized computers.  I play an unofficial "Star Trek" game (with ASCII characters) on the terminal in his office.  He brings home stacks of used punch cards that I draw on or make into cutout characters.
  
• The neighbor kids and I play superheroes by cutting out masks from construction paper and pinning bath towels and pillow cases around our necks.  Comic books aside from Disney characters and Archie begin to find their way into our home.  I am Superman for Halloween two years running, made possible by a costume lovingly crafted by my very craftarific mother.  The camp '60s Batman series is in syndication and is featured every afternoon on KTVU channel 2 as the main feature after a smorgasbord of Jay Ward cartoons hosted by Captain Satellite and puppets Charley and Humphrey.
• Up to this point, Elizabeth Montgomery and Barbara Eden have symbolized female sexuality for me (usually in their evil twin brunette guises - go figure), but things are about to change as femininity shifts to become synonymous with strength.  Yvonne Craig as Batgirl stirs something within my very prepubescent loins, but it is Lynda Carter in Wonder Woman who really gets things rolling. Of course, I am already a rabid Six Million Dollar Man fan, with my Steve Austin action figure (complete with roll-up latex condom skin), so incorporating Lindsay Wagner as Jaime Sommers into my pre-adolescent fantasy stable is as easy as creating adventures for my legion of Mego action figures (including Marvel and DC superheroes, Mad Monsters, Super Knights, Robin Hood, Star Trek and Planet of the Apes characters). My first figure is Aquaman.
  
• Sometime around '75, I play my first game of Pong on a friend's home system from Sears.
  
• Bicentennial fever starts in 1975 and reaches a fever pitch July 4th, 1976, which we spend very quietly at my mom's parents' place out at Half Moon Bay.  I add the Mego knock-off Heroes of the American Revolution action figures to my collection.  It's rather comical to see George Washington and John Paul Jones do battle with The Hulk, but by golly I am absolutely riveted.
  
• The summer of '76 is spent (when we weren't swimming or playing outside) camped out in front of my  dad's parents' console television, watching reruns of 1960s programs like Lost in Space, Banana Splits (and every Hanna-Barbera animated series ever made), and The Monkees.  We would pick up stakes and build a home in Aptos, California in August 1976, upending my friendships and social life, such as it was.  To cope with the move, I take my imaginary worlds with me.  Space: 1999 also makes its appearance on my radar, but I don't really get into it for a couple years.

The Early Years

• 1968-1970: Born in (West) Germany in 1968, my father a Staff Sergeant in the US Army.  '68 is arguably the height of the Vietnam conflict.  Anti-American sentiment abroad is common.  My parents pack me around Europe in a baby carrier and return home to the San Francisco Bay Area of California after my dad musters out in 1969.  We move from San Carlos into a house in San Jose (I'm told that may folks paid $22,500.00).  My little brother, Matt, is born in August 1970.  I wish I could remember Europe, but my conscious memory really begins here.
  
  
• 1970-1972: Matt overdoses on iron supplements in April 1972 and dies at age 19 months, just shy of my 4th birthday.  My family is devastated.  Perhaps not so strangely, between the loss of Matt and molestation at the hands of my dad's mother, my memories of this time are hyper-aware.  My television diet consists of Sesame Street, Mister Rogers Neighborhood, The Electric Company, Villa Allegre, Captain Kangaroo - normal kids' stuff of the era.  Star Trek is in syndication and I often watch it with my dad, along with Monday Night Football and Saturday morning cartoons, the bulwark of which is Bugs Bunny (and all the classic Warner Brothers shorts).  I also recall seeing my first anime: Adventures of Pinocchio, and Prince Planet, as well as Kimba the White Lion.  Super Chicken and Spider-Man are also in my consciousness, and the cornerstone of my toy arsenal is Action Jackson.
  
  As a side note, 1972 is apparently a big year for me in the art world.  I am constantly drawing.  On any surface.  With anything that will spread ink, wax or graphite.  Some of it (like a mini graphic novel about Snoopy saving a deep sea diver, which my dad copied and distributed around his office at work) is pretty mainstream, while some is incredibly bloody battlefield imagery of wounded and dying soldiers.  I think we can safely say the news footage from Vietnam has an effect on the consciousness of this young artist.

My Life as a Sci-Fi Nerd

Or, As You Geek It.

So I'm reading Wil Wheaton's Just a Geek, and his story about the Star Wars toy trade that led to his five-dollar candy and videogame spree jarred something loose in my consciousness.  It seems that your general geekery is pretty well established in American culture now, almost ubiquitous.  As Patton Oswalt recently wrote in Wired, "now all America is otaku".  But it wasn't always like this, and I think my generation (which is also Wheaton's) has had a unique experience coming of age in a time of technological innovation and mass media influence in popular culture.

For this series of entries, I conceived to assemble a timeline of the influences that shaped my particular brand of nerdery.  Or should I say, nerdaliciousness.  As Amok says in The Specials, "Quit making up words."  The following bullet points should help illustrate how geek culture infiltrates real life and impacts a person.

I've divided up the eras into separate posts so that it's easier to follow.  But it's still lengthy.  Better pour a nice warm beverage and have a seat.

Operatic Metropolis

Raff came over yesterday to screen my brand new copy of The Complete Metropolis Blu-Ray.  I had screened it shortly after its arrival a couple weeks ago, but it's a whole different experience when you're watching with someone else, conferring, riffing and looking at a piece of cinematic and cultural history with new eyes.

One thing that Raff said that really made sense is that watching most silent films is like watching opera.  The acting is histrionic, the blocking a large-scale pantomime.  Most modern audiences (aside from the history geeks, film geeks and film history geeks) simply don't have the skills required to watch and enjoy a vintage silent film.  Culturally, our attention span has atrophied.  After 80+ years of war, cultural revolution and political scandal, we've become jaded.  The general populace finds it impossible to watch, say, Lon Chaney's Hunchback of Notre Dame without muttering a collective, "How quaint," or, "You mean I have to read these title cards?" or, "Bored now - is American Idol on?"

As a film student, I was forced to watch several silent classics.  Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari were among them.  We got some Mack Sennett and some Harold Lloyd, some Buster Keaton and some D.W. Griffith.  I even did my final report on Charlie Chaplin.  And although my vintage film aesthetics were honed in a scholastic setting, for whatever reason Fritz Lang's Metropolis wasn't part of the curriculum.  I had to seek it out later - first in the form of a public domain chop-fest based on the American brutalization of the original, then in the form of Giorgio Moroder's glorified music video, and finally in its 2002 restored version.  But I was not prepared for what is essentially Lang's original cut (minus 5 or so minutes we'll probably never find), with a brand new symphonic recording of Gottfried Huppertz's original score.  It was like watching a whole different film, with characters and entire plot threads resurrected when they'd previously been excised.

So, while silent film appreciation is a dying critical discipline of a dead art form, The Complete Metropolis is nonetheless a compelling and gorgeous restoration of an influential science fiction masterpiece, full of social commentary and not-so-thinly disguised forecasts of the future.
 

Without Lang...

...there would be no Blade Runner.

Without Maria...

...no C-3PO.

Also, it's especially enjoyable with Kelpie.