Even his fans spend a good bit of time making fun of “Crazy Uncle” Joe Biden’s colorful persona, but we shouldn’t forget that he’s scary smart, and perhaps more importantly, a genuinely decent guy who isn’t afraid to drop the politician mask now and then and just be a human being when the situation calls for it.

Go read this article about speech he gave to a military survivors group; you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Even better? Watch the video:

People talked about Bill Clinton and his “I feel your pain” schtick. He’s good, but Bill’s got nothin’ on the Vice President here. I’m glad we’ve got him around.

Because *I* have:

Witness: The trailer to the 2012 movie verion of the musical Les Miserables:

I must say, this looks right, and sounds pretty good, thankfully. The cast is theoretically very good, and the fact that director Tom Hooper, I’ve read, insisted that the whole thing be done with live vocals rather than lip synching to studio tracks is encouraging.

However, it’s the film adaptation of one of the most popular and beloved muscials of the last 30 years. It was my first Broadway show, and probably still my favorite (and not just because all the cute artsy girls in high school walked around wearing the t-shirt all the damned time). Who cares if it only has like four melodies across the entire show? It’s iconic, and rightfully so.

Which is why I’m so relieved that it doesn’t seem horrid. What we hear of Hathaway’s vocals are quite good, even if I’d personally prefer she go with the more defiant, pissed off at the world interpretation of “I Dreamed A Dream” rather than the sorrowful, piteous one (both are valid choices). I can’t wait to see Jackman chew up some gorgeously shot scenery.

So, these 90 seconds or so have, for the moment, set my mind at ease, at least a little bit. I really hope this ends up being as good as I want it to be. Too many of us have waited too long for it to suck (or get run over by The Hobbit, since I think they’re opening the same weekend).

So, this past weekend was Balticon. I was there. In dramatic contrast to the last 48 hours or so, I mostly had a pretty good time, basking in the communal glow of geekdom (or not…the communal “glow” can occasionally be described as more of a “funk” or “stench”, and is not particularly pleasant to bask in), mingling with like minds, meeting new friends, and spending some time with other great people I don’t always get to see very often.

I spent some time in panels about publishing, songwriting, and gaming, and may have been recruited to sit on one or two next year (about gaming). I listened to a lot of excellent music, and saw an interesting short film, and watched an award-winning webcomic writer wrestle with the implications of prodigiously foaming malt beverages.

Normally, I’d weave everyone’s links and such into a coherent narrative, but given the level of real-life stress I’ve dealt with since leaving the convention venue (mostly expensive things breaking and a couple of particularly daunting parenting challenges), I would probably get it wrong. Instead, I’m going to mostly just end up listing people; apologies up front if I left someone out. I will say, however, that I highly recommend all the people and projects I link to as Guaranteed Cool Stuff™, and highly suggest you follow a few links and exchange some of your money for some of their art. The transactions will be worth it.

I greatly enjoyed the music and company of talented musical performers and all-around good guys Jonah Knight, John Anealio, and Danny Birt. I also made the brief acquaintance of the very talented performers Heather Dale and “Sooj” Tucker, whose work I expect I’ll be enjoying for many years to come.

I also met some interesting new people, including Barbara and Mark of Mercury Retrograde Press, who throw a great panel (and a great party, as well as publish great books by nice people like Leona Wisoker), and an entirely different Barbara and Carl from Mysticon, another event we’ll be adding to our already busy schedule for next year.

So, yeah. See ya all next year.

Just a programming note that you may or may not notice. I re-jiggered the links to your right just a bit, adding a new section for all the musician types I had been including in the “interesting people” section.

“Interesting People” was a heading I had been using for people I’ve (usually) met out there in the world who have a blog or web presence they wouldn’t mind me sending a little traffic to. Often, these people are friends of varying degrees of “close and personal” whose work I enjoy just as much as I do their company.

It turns out that quite a lot of those interesting people make some wonderful music, so it seemed to make sense to create another section just for them, as I’ve always done with the “reading list” section (for some of whom the same friend/fan overlap situation applies).

So, I did. I just wanted to assure anyone affected by the change that just because your link was moved to “play list” doesn’t mean that I don’t still consider you interesting people, in case, you know, you were worried or something.

quoting myself from the previous post:

So yeah, it’s been a little bit crazy. Maybe it’ll let up soon, and maybe it won’t. We’ll see.

From here, I can definitively say that so so, far, it hasn’t let up at all. In fact, the universe has decided that perhaps I didn’t have enough crap to deal with, and heaped on a whole bunch more in the last 24 hours.

Perhaps once I get out from under at least some of it, I’ll write a bit about the good times at this years’s Balticon, because beyond logistics and travel issues, there were some pretty good times to be had. I prefer to do those good times justice, and honestly, right now, I find myself unable to do so.

At least to me, it seems like I’m not posting as much lately. I suspect that if I go back and count things, I’m probably running at about the same pace; it just doesn’t feel like I’m putting in the time.

Granted, there’s been a bit more of life out there to take up my time these last few weeks. Between the flurry of activities bubbling up around the idea of it closing in on the end of the school year, and the fact that work has entered an interesting new testing phase, which means that a lot more of my headspace is occupied with things like writing up system defects and learning about new and terribly interesting things like variable index-based pricing formulas, I haven’t had a lot of time to spare.

What time I did have to spare got taken up by things like a few evenings out with friends to things like exciting baseball games and ren faires, an excellent tapas dinner thrown by some aquaintances, throwing way too much money in too short a time into automotive upkeep, losing a couple of elderly fish, the usual stresses of careers, relationships, parenthood, and home ownership, working out those stresses by beating up dwarven cultists on Wednesday nights, and occasionally trying to carve out half an hour to just sit on my ass to catch my breath.

And in 48 hours or so, I’ll be headed off to Balticon.

So yeah, it’s been a little bit crazy. Maybe it’ll let up soon, and maybe it won’t. We’ll see.

In any case, being the time of year it is, lots of people are graduating from various institutions of learning (including a few friends of mine for whom I have quite a lot of pride), and a somewhat smaller (but still significant) number of people are delivering speeches at these graduation ceremonies. Sometimes, people in that latter group are occasionally interesting in ways that I completely wasn’t twenty years ago.

People, like, say, Neil Gaiman:

So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom, and if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would.

And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art.

Good Advice. One of these days, I’ll get around to following more than the mistakes part. There may have been some art, though, depending on how wide your definition of “good” is.

If you’re reading this post within a week or two of my posting it, you’ll be able to look over to the left side of the window and see that Netflix brought a copy of the “family” film Ramona and Beezus to my house. It’s a rather pedestrian adaptation of a couple of Judy Blume books you might have read in elementary school if you’re of a certain age. The kids sorta liked it.

Dutifully, since I watched it, I listed over in the little box that I use for that sort of thing. Of course, when I typed it the first time, I made a typographical error; an error which was both amusing and offered some insight into what I might rather have been watching.

So, this evening, inspired, I spent a couple of minutes poorly gimping up the following image:

Well, I thought it was funny. Also, I’m a much bigger fan of Mary Tamm as Romana, but Ms. Ward, being rather more elfin and whimsical, seemed to fit the bill a bit better.

The 30th edition of this particular exercise does have a theme, though I’m not entirely sure what it is. There’s a lot of “rock” going on here, spanning several decades, but centered on the early 90s, for no other reason besides the fact that that’s when I did the greatest volume of compact disc buying. In any case, it was a mostly enjoyable stretch of listening, with a few exceptions, though the biggest one was the disc I didn’t give it’s own entry, but it kind of got it’s own extended aside – consider this entry as covering four and a half discs; call the running total 126.5.

In any case, enjoy the rock, and occasional lack thereof:

♦- Boston –Walk On: This is another one of those record club infiltrators, I suspect, though it’s quite possible that I used it to fill out an order of free discs, because it’s something I probably would have gotten anyway – at the point in my musical life where I would have acquired this, I was coming out of the awkward country phase, and thanks to my 80 hour a week summer job, was listening to a *lot* of classic rock radio. Even so, this is Boston’s fourth record (without Brad Delp, the iconic lead singer), released in ’94; well past the late 70s classic rock heyday of “More Than A Feeling” and “Peace of Mind”. I’ve never been a huge Boston fan, but the idea that it’s the rock and roll equivalent of inventors tinkering in the basement appeals to my geek side. Although the band toured, Boston was always pretty much the baby of Tom Scholz, songwriter, guitarist, and MIT post-grad in electrical engineering. Scholz thinkered with pedals and effects boxes and amplifiers and stuff in his basement, and out came hit singles (and occasional guitar gear from Scholz’s electronics company, SR&D, like the Rockman headphone amplifier); with a variety of musicians floating in and out- many think of it as more a studio project than a “band”. As far as my reaction to this particular record, I like it. By the mid-90s, the polished classic rock sound was kind of a cliche or trope, but then, this band did a lot to invent that trope. It’s great to hear masterful perfectionists (they’d have to be, knocking out only five records in the band’s 30-odd years) work their craft. Every sound on this record is exactly where it’s intended to be, though at the same time, doesn’t have the kind of sterility you’d expect from that sort of exactness. The soaring vocals and intricate guitar lines on the “hit” “I Need Your Love” are technically perfect, though still manage to resonate on a level deeper than the technical; likewise, the organ on the “Walk On” medley are bombastic and majestic, and sound perfectly “Boston”. Also of note on this one is the “girl song”, “Magdeline” (which feels rather like a not-quite-as-good follow-up to Third Stage‘s “Amanda”) has a geographic connection to my youth – the tune was originally written and recorded by Danville PA based indie band Hybrid Ice in 1982; a few of whose former members I’ve run into in various venues and watering holes over the years.

♦- Bon Jovi –Cross Road: Cross Road is the first “best of” collection from Bon Jovi, covering the first five band records and Jon Bon Jovi’s solo record/movie soundtrack. The bulk of the record are the big hits from Slippery When Wet and New Jersey, filled out with token inclusions from the others, plus a couple of new tracks not really worth mentioning (except to say that they’re not very good, and presage the trend of the band’s latter-day change in musical direction). The good old stuff is, as always, the good old stuff. “Wanted Dead or Alive” and “Livin’ On A Prayer” still work as well as they used to; what surprised me about the stuff from SWW was the fact that Sambora’s guitar is more of a garnish than anything fundamental; it doesn’t play as big a part in the overall sound as does Bryan’s keys and, especially on “Prayer”, the iconic bassline (which is interesting, as the band hasn’t had an official, on-the-books bassist for like 15 years). All those heavily chorused harmonics and dive-bombs could be taken out of the mix, and Prayer would still work as a fully-constructed object. Take out the keys, and it wouldn’t be a song anymore. That’s not to say that the guitar wasn’t part of the sound – try doing “Lay Your Hands on Me” or “I’ll Be There For You” without it…

…which leads to a digression: I also listened to This Left Feels Right, in amongst this batch of discs; a 2003 disc of new versions of classic Bon Jovi tracks, which, frankly, is awful, and I didn’t feel like writing it up. As to why it’s awful, I can point to one signal – on the lead-off track, a re-recording of “Wanted”, full of synth drums and heavily compressed and digitally processed electric guitars, John Bon Jovi changes the lyric “I’ve Seen A Million Faces, and I’ve Rocked Them All” to “I’ve Seen a Million Faces…well, I’ve seen a lot of faces…”. Listener beware – despite the uptempo nature of track one, there is no rock at all for the rest of this record, in accordance with prophecy. There’s barely a guitar to be found. It’s all schmaltzy strings and low bpm. They tried “Lay Your Hands on Me” and “I’ll Be There For You” without the guitar, and it didn’t work. This was a disappointment when I bought it, and remains so today.

…anyway, unlike that last bit (which I guess I wrote up anyway, despite not wanting to), the listening experience, is pleasant, if uneven (given the newer stuff – feel free to skip “Always” and “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night”) – listening to it was a nice jaunt down memory lane into the world of my early teens (which itself was uneven – a nice place to visit, but there’s no way you drag me back there full time), even if the tracks don’t resonate with me as much any more the way they did when I was a kid. I would have been happier if one or two of the new tracks hadn’t been bumped to make room for more “essentials” like “Born to Be My Baby” or “I’d Die For You”.

♦- The Badlees –See Me As A Picture: the best so far, 1990-2012: This disc was just released in the last couple of weeks, and more or less picks up my music super-fandom right where the previous disc left off. It’s a full-on career retrospective, with a really great package (yay for physical media) featuring a big booklet full of reminisces and remembrances from the band and others in the orbit. The selection of tracks is weighed, not surprisingly, a bit more heavily toward the era of River Songs forward, though catches a few highlights from the early discs, including one of my favorites, “Like A Rembrandt” from Diamonds in the Coal. It’s a good listen all around, and puts a few of the more recent tunes into a new context, allowing for greater appreciation; For example, “Drive Back Home” from Love is Rain kind of disappeared into the mix on that disc (for me, it’s all about “Radio at Night”), though here, in this package, it stands out as a really great piece of songwriting and studio engineering. There were only three songs on this package that I didn’t already own in one format or another, two new tracks (which are good, but not great), and a fun studio cover of Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” circa 2004 from a soundtrack to a short story collection put out by MTV, which is an interesting artifact, and plays to all the band’s strengths. However, despite having almost all of it (and then some) already, there was no way I wasn’t snagging this one the moment it was available.

♦- Skid Row: Rounding out this edition of cutout is a disc that I picked up on a lark on Monday. I bought this, Skid Row’s first record, the first time when it came out on cassette. This CD I grabbed off the top of the Walmart $5 bin as I was picking up some groceries for the week on the way to the DC office. I’m not entirely sure why, but I’ve been in a bit of a hair-metal headspace lately; this five bucks was my way of scratching that itch. The disc itself is nicely bright and slinky, with lots of syncopated guitar riffs and a 20-something Sebastian Bach’s soaring, operatic vocals. Lyrically, it’s almost pure 80s Sunset Strip trash, but it’s fun trash – “Youth Gone Wild” was a great single, and deeper cuts like “Sweet Little Sister” and “Here I Am” betray a certain pop sensibility under all the slease. However, the track that sticks with me 20-odd years later is the cheesy power ballad “I Remember You”, love letters in the sand and all. Why? Because it’s got one of the greatest guitar solos of the 80s wedged in there amongst all the G9-C9-Dsus acoustic chords – those last three wailing notes are something to behold.

Cribbed from a gaming with kids discussion on ENWorld, via commenter Kzach:

Stereotypes exist for a reason. They create stability. Breaking stereotypes is NEVER a good idea. It leads to individuality, imagination, self-confidence and improved self-worth. We can’t have that!

I really home you all smell the sarcasm.