Writer/director/professional asshole Kevin Smith has been in the news lately. Partially, this is because he has a new film out, but mostly it’s because he used the power of social media and his million and a half Twitter followers to throw a hissy about being deemed too fat to physically fit a single airline seat. There are some things about his account that don’t quite make sense to me, but the one thing about which I’m fairly certain is that the seat is not at fault.

Thinking about Kevin Smith (something I care to avoid whenever feasible) has had me thinking about a peculiar subset of geekdom: the fan-turned-pro. These are the relatively few fanboys and girls who have achieved a measure of creative success in movies and/or TV, and who have themselves inspired devoted followers who declare them the wittiest, most wonderful things ever to exist in the universe of stuff.

In the case of Kevin Smith, my theory is that his entire rise to fame is built upon the scene from his debut film Clerks in which the main characters debate the ethics of blowing up the many independent contractors laboring aboard the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi. I suspect that a great many people who would never otherwise have been interested in a cheap indie flick about misogynistic, jerkwad store employees saw it solely because they’d heard about that scene. I know that I did.*

Now, I’m not in a position to review his body of work. The only other Smith film I’ve seen was Chasing Amy, which I thought was okay. Nothing I’ve heard about his later flicks encouraged me to check them out. From my perspective, his chief contribution to culture has been giving other fanboys license to wear black trenchcoats during situations in which trenchcoats are neither necessary nor a good idea.

I believe that, to a large extent, Smith’s following is built upon a foundation of self justification. “If a tubby, repulsive geek like him can make it, then how can I be worthless?”

He’s not the only one to benefit from that flavor of adoration. (Though he is the one least likely to fly on Southwest Airlines.) Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon certainly qualifies.

Now, please understand that–unlike the anal pustule that is Kevin Smith–I myself have a great deal of fondness for Joss Whedon. My DVD library includes seven seasons of Buffy, five seasons of Angel and no seasons of Dollhouse. (But the fact that I watched every last damned episode of the latter suggests that I am willing to follow him into places most others wouldn’t.) All in all, I think he’s a talented writer who happens to work with the sort of subject matter I enjoy.

I have argued with friends and associates who find Whedonites a particularly noxious fandom. I don’t think that they’re any worse than any other group of myopic idolizers. I’ve hung out on enough sci-fi message boards to remember the ferocity of Babylon 5 fans who saw its creator J. Michael Straczynski as the most remarkable TV producer ever. Joss’ fans may be all too willing to blame his failures on others,** but I don’t think that’s unusual.***

I do, however, believe that Whedonites (and I admit to having Whedonite tendencies myself) extend their intense devotion to any actor touched by the Joss. Certainly, I initially tuned into How I Met Your Mother mostly because of Alyson Hannigan.

How else to explain the extreme interest in minor Internet celeb Felicia Day? She played a potential Slayer in the final season of Buffy, and–more significantly–the love interest in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. She’s moderately cute, and can kinda sing. She produces and stars in a web series called The Guild, based on her experiences as an online gamer. Basically, she’s Kitty Pryde of the X-Men–a non-threatening, mildly geeky imaginary girlfriend–with the added advantage of being a real person one could actually touch but never will. But, because of the Whedon connection,**** she’s the most beautiful talent triple-threat, and woe to the persons who can’t see it for themselves.

Sometimes, this unnatural attention runs its natural course. These days, one rarely hears about Babylon 5 outside of sentences like, “Hey, remember when Babylon 5 was a thing?” J. Michael Straczynski mostly writes comics these days. Even so, I’m sure that someone out there is breathlessly declaring JMS the bestest thing to hit comics since Stan Lee.

Thankfully, I do not hang out on that message board.

*For my own part, as far back as 1977 I had wondered much the same thing about the original Star Wars. Even at 13, I’d begun to wonder about things like whether everyone aboard the first Death Star deserved to be vaporized. Surely, I thought, there were at least some imprisoned Rebels aboard?

**Dollhouse was ruined by pinheads at Fox, not because it was an unworkable series premise populated by characters who were literally blank slates and fronted by an actress with the chameleon-like ability to play a single personality.

***Can’t wait to read the justifications for Cop Out.

****The gamer thing also helps.

Dave Rant anal pustule, assholes, fanboys, Felicia Day, Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith

The last few weeks of work have been crazy busy. For one, WILL has never said “no” to a meeting. There are days during which I’m either in a meeting, preparing for a meeting or scheduling my own meeting. Yes, I am part of the problem.

Most of the meetings I’ve scheduled have had to do with my upcoming music competition/fundraising program, A Cappella BEATdown – LIVE! We’re a little more than two weeks to air. I know this because I had my first anxiety dream about it this week.

Actually, it’s coming together well, even if we did wind up with more a cappella groups than I’d wanted. With eight sets of contestants, the show has bloated from its original two hour footprint to two forty-five. Yet I look at the photos of the competitors and I get excited; it’s going to be great to have 90+ talented young people in the building. There’s a fair amount of diversity, including two Hindi groups, two high school groups (from the same school, so there’s rivalry potential) and two different universities represented.

This sort of thing seems made for viral marketing, so I’m dipping my toe into that area. My Facebook fan page went live yesterday, and there’s a nifty print-and-post flyer on the WILL website. I really wish that I had about two more weeks to do a proper job with the marketing, but it’s at least a bit more ambitious than usual for us.

I never thought that I’d one day see myself producing a musical competition, but in one sense this is exactly the sort of thing I love most in the world: putting on a show!

Dave TV a Cappella Beatdown, WILL-TV

It’s been a week of downs and ups which climaxed in Thursday’s workplace massacre. Nine of my coworkers received termination notices. While I’m grateful to still find myself drawing a paycheck, it’s hard to feel too happy about it.

Meanwhile, Vic’s annual heart checkup on Friday turned out okay. I didn’t expect otherwise, but it’s still nice to get confirmation.

All of this is my way of saying that I valued a good laugh this week, and one of the best came from this week’s Modern Family, the Thiel household’s new favorite comedy. While I love the entire cast–especially the oddly mature kid Manny–I have to say that I find myself identifying with Phil, the childlike, overeager husband.

Here’s a good bit from Wednesday’s episode, in which Phil and his wife Claire try to spice up their life with a bit of role-play. “Pretty kitty has nails.”

Dave TV jackpot, Julie Bowen, Modern Family

Lost is back for its sixth and final season, and if last night’s premiere was any indication, it should be one helluva plane ride.

(MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!)

As I–and apparently, many others–suspected, this year the show has abandoned its flashbacks and flash-forwards for flashes-sideways into a reality in which the Oceanic flight never crashed. It seems that last year’s season-ending atomic explosion didn’t alter history as Jack and friends had hoped, but rather created a parallel track. Yet this new timeline is not the one we saw in the pilot episode; while many of the expected players were aboard that fateful flight, others were conspicuously absent. And there are other changes both big (the shattered Island at the bottom of the ocean) and small (Sun never learned English?). Now our cast of characters simultaneously exist in two states. It’s Schrödinger’s Plane Crash.

I’m glad to see the show finally pay off the cryptic yet obviously important backgammon scene from the pilot, in which Locke explained the game as “Two players. Two sides. One is light, one is dark.” At the time I’d thought it was setting up a schism between Jack’s group and a rival bunch of survivors to be led by Locke. Which, in a sense, it did, except that Locke isn’t Locke, but rather Jacob’s mysterious opponent. Who, by the way, is also the smoke monster. And has been conning Ben for at least half a season. Obviously the game continues, but the pawns are only beginning to catch on.

I find it a bit odd that a show that seemed so grounded in sci-fi last season has taken such a hard left back into supernatural territory. I don’t have a problem with it; it’s not like there haven’t been ghosts and similarly inexplicable phenomena since the first season. It’s just that now we’ve got healing pools, angry island gods and jungle temples. (I like that pretty much every review of last night’s show references Indiana Jones in discussing the now-revealed Temple, as if one hundred years of stories about hidden jungle civilizations only go back to 1981.)

It’s great to see a show that had foundered so badly back in season three right itself and become more satisfying than ever. I’m very much looking forward to seeing where this journey leads.

Dave TV Lost

The other, non-a cappella reason I was largely incommunicado these past couple of weeks was that I was prepping for Winter War, Champaign’s annual wargaming convention. Unlike many past years, when I only showed up long enough to participate in the auction, this time I signed up for three days of events.

I played:

• Age of Conan (a Risk-like strategy game set in the world of Robert E. Howard’s barbarian hero)
• Heroscape (a rules-light wargame set on a massive board with a mixture of snow, lava and swamp terrain, plus a big castle in the middle)
• Doctor Who (which I thought would be the new role-playing game based on the TV show, but was actually a terrible, old Games Workshop boardgame I used to own before I happily got rid of it for its awfulness)
• Battlestar Galactica (everyone’s favorite “who’s the secret Cylon?” boardgame, with the “Pegasus” expanded rules)
• Warhammer 40,000 (a tournament event of the popular tabletop futuristic wargame)

Age of Conan was enjoyable, though I think I’d hesitate in adding it to my collection. I already have a bunch of games that involve pushing plastic soldiers around a map of the world/galaxy. Plus, it’s expensive ($80 SRP), and perhaps a bit too complicated for a night of casual gaming. My Aquilonian empire got off to a crummy start, unable to generate more than a couple of soldiers while the Turanians were out making diplomatic woo to all their neighbors, but by the end of the game we were knocking on the doors of Cimmeria itself and I managed to take second place.

My friend/co-worker Deane and his daughter were among the Cylon suspects who played Battlestar Galactica. For the uninitiated, BSG is a semi-cooperative game in which the players are characters from the TV show trying to survive frequent attacks by Cylon space fleets and sabotage by certain members of their own group who are secretly working for the other side. This was the first game of BSG I’ve played in which I was one of the Cylons…and it was also the first game in which the Cylons failed to stop the human fleet from reaching their destination.

As for the Warhammer tournament…well, I’m coming to that.

First there was the game auction. I love the auction. It is–no joke–one of my favorite things each year. This year I took a vorpal sword to my game collection and unloaded a storage bin full of stuff. And if that had been all that happened, it would have been enough.

But then there was the Box.

The Box was an oversized Sterilite container chock-full of plastic gaming miniatures. Mostly Dungeons & Dragons, but also Star Wars, Heroscape, Heroclix and Mage Knight. There were even a few lone stragglers from Creepy Freaks, Dreamblade and Horror Clix, not to mention a few zombies from the Zombies!!! boardgame, a Lego skeleton, a Darth Maul toy and, inexplicably, a dry erase marker.

And when I saw it, I said, “I will walk out of here with this box.”

The Box.

I wound up paying a mere thirty bucks for it, which was a steal considering that I would’ve gone as high as sixty and still felt good about it. I also bought a big bag of Heroscape terrain pieces (presumably from the same person, as it was a similarly random assortment of stuff) for $15.

The Bag.

That evening I pieced it out. There were 360 D&D figures, 88 Heroscape (without their army cards, but still) and 54 Star Wars. Lots of rare figures, too, including a Huge Red Dragon and a couple of Rampaging Wampas.

Contents of the Box.

Contents of the Bag.

I sorted out what I considered to be the dross (including all of the Mage Knight minis) and sold it the next morning for ten bucks to a guy who just wanted some fantasy miniatures for his kids. Net cost: $35.

They say that money cannot buy happiness, but they did not bring home a metric fuckton of plastic fun.

Sunday morning brought the Warhammer 40,000 tournament. I hadn’t played 40K in a couple of years, and had never played with the current edition of the rules. I was kinda nervous about it, and spent a lot of time in the preceding two weeks relearning the rules and adding some fiddly bits to my Sisters of Battle army.

Turned out that I needn’t have worried, since I was one of only three people who signed up. That was okay, though, as I wasn’t really in it for the tournament anyway. I just wanted an excuse to blow the dust off my space nuns and get up to date on the new rules.

"To battle! In the name of the Emperor!"

Good thing too, as I got slaughtered by the other players’ Space Marines. The only game I won was the the third one, and that was because my jetpack girls were able to “capture the flags” and get them back to my side of the board. Turns out that my army–which is based entirely around what I happen to have in my collection–isn’t really up to fighting a fully tricked-out Space Marine force. It was disheartening to see gal after gal fall under what seemed to be a never-ending stream of long-range fire. Still, it was okay, as I had no intention of actually winning.

The cave tunnels were especially frustrating for my jetpack troops.

However, I did win the “sportsmanship” award, which ought to be amusing to anyone who has gamed with me on a regular basis. Granted that I’m far from the poorest sport I’ve known, but I certainly shouldn’t be getting any awards for it.

The event organizer also graded our modelling and painting skills*, and that was when I dearly wanted to say something that would’ve cost me my sportsmanship recognition.

Look, I have no illusions that I’m any great shakes as a model-builder. When I was a kid, I made my dad build and paint all of my monster models.

But when I think about the state of my abilities when I bought my first set of space nuns to where I am today, I’m very proud of what I’ve managed to accomplish over the years. I’ve become much more confident and more likely to experiment with modifications and conversions.

*That’s actually pretty common for events based on Games Workshop games, as modelling is such a big part of the hobby.

So I was pretty annoyed when the organizer went down his painting checklist:

First off, I really wasn’t bringing my army to show off my mad painting skills.

Plus, even though I realize that what I’m asking for here is an “Everyone Gets a Prize” prize, I feel as if I ought to at least get some credit for the progress I’ve made. And for bringing such an oddball army as Sisters of Battle when everyone else had boring, ol’ Space Marines.

And finally, while the winning army was more technically proficient, Marines–most of whom are encased in relatively featureless ovoid armor suits–are not nearly as tricky to paint as Sisters. Battle Sisters are 1) smaller, 2) insanely detailed and 3) less likely to cover their faces with helmets. (I hate painting faces!) I mean, really…figure skating and diving give points for degree of difficulty; why not wargame modelling?

So, even though I don’t regret participating in the tournament, I don’t see me ever doing it again.

In the end, I had a great weekend overall. For the first time in far too long, I felt energized and ready to take on the next week! (Maybe I’ll practice my painting.)

Dave Games freakin' awesome, nuns, Warhammer

Time flies when you’re crazy busy. Can’t complain, though. At least it helps distract me from the workplace doom and gloom. I’m not certain which is worse for morale: the university-mandated furlough days, or the knowledge that they will do nothing to improve our financial situation next fiscal year. That sound you hear is the tin of razor blades sliding open.

But hey, I’m doing stuff. In a development absolutely no one saw coming, I am producing an a cappella musical competition special for our March pledge drive. If that seems unlikely to you, you’re not the only one. What can I say? I’m from the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney tradition: we’ve got a barn, let’s put on a show!

And really, this is the sort of thing that has always appealed to me about working in TV: the opportunity to do something unexpected, and do it on camera for what I hope will be thousands of people.

a Cappella Beatdown — LIVE! (no joke, that’s the title) will be coming to a screen near you (assuming that you live near me) on March 8 at 7:00 pm. Will it be a dream, or a dud? That’s the joy–and terror–of live television!

Dave General a Cappella Beatdown, WILL-TV