Gunman at the PCL

So...

You may have heard that there was an armed shooter today at the Perry-Castañeda Library at the University of Texas.  This happens to be the building where I, my office mates, and many of my colleagues and friends work.

The PCL (as its called, or "Pickle" as its called less often) is also a place open not just to students and the UT Community, but to the public at large.  Being open and public, I should say, is exactly what libraries do.  They're a public service, and the people who work in your local library believe in the right to openness of knowledge and availability of all their resources with a true conviction I find admirable.

I wasn't supposed to be at work today, at least not at the PCL.  Today I was slated to be back in Waco, but as I was getting in my car I received the first UT Emergency text, a system which was set up for exactly this sort of situation.  Sadly, university staff are all too aware of the potential for campus shooters.

Shortly after the UT emergency text, my Blackberry began chirping with requests for data from friends, family and colleagues.  Unfortunately, I was driving, which made texting impossible (and illegal), but a former co-worker actually called me and agreed to help me out by calling my office mates.

We found one another fairly quickly, and I believe by 9:00 everyone was accounted for.  I was already headed north, so I routed myself to my office mate's house and parked on her sofa for a few hours watching the news and figuring out what to do next.

Let me be frank:  we got very lucky today. 

The UT campus is squarely in the middle of Austin, a very safe city (a ridiculously safe city, really).  Crimes usually involve stolen bicycles or some B&E on west campus.  Masked gunmen with AK-47's don't usually fit into that picture, and especially not at the PCL.  But we do receive emergency texts about "suspicious characters", etc... with such frequency that I admit that I didn't take the initial warning very seriously.  But the all caps "UT CAMPUS IS ON LOCKDOWN" text left no ambiguity.  And those minutes between receiving the second text and knowing exactly where my office mate was were a bit nerve-racking.

As of this moment, and I think nothing will change, there is no second shooter, and the single gunman seems to have caused a lot of havoc and killed himself, but nobody else seems to have been shot.  As of this moment, the campus has been given the all-clear, but everyone has been asked to evacuate. 

I didn't go to Waco.  For what seemed like a very long while, I didn't know the status of my officemates or the folks I talk to on the stairwell or in the foyer of the library every day.  While the building has three or four different ways the folks in my office could exit if a fire were to break out, I am well aware that this is a different and uncontrollable situation.  Standing up to do a presentation this morning was just not going to go well.

It appears that the UT Community handled the situation well, and the APD, Sheriff's Department and UT Police appear to have handled the entire incident amazingly smoothly.

But you still think about everything that could have happened today.  Every time I walk out the door of my office, I look up at the top of the UT Tower, and while the ghost of Charles Whitman still haunts campus, the bells chiming in the carillon or the tower splashed in orange light after a football or volleyball win is what pops to mind when I think of the Tower.  I don't think too much about the 14 dead and 30-odd wounded from that hot summer of 1966.  Except when I do.  And, for me, that's pre-history.

The idea of walking into my building tomorrow knowing that, in the end, it was just a miserable end for someone, and that at least he took nobody with him...  that's something, I suppose.  My building won't be the one to bear the brunt of another tragedy like the one on the South Mall that people still speak about in code when they're on campus.

Libraries have long lives.  They need for their doors to always be open to the public.  One gunman can't and won't change that, and the first people to tell you that will be the librarians who might have been in the path of fire.  We'll do what public works always do:  we'll keep the doors open.

Why the gunman picked the library, I have no idea.  Its hard to imagine he had any connection to the library more than any other building.  At 8:00 AM, the populace is a collection of random students, student workers, librarians and other staff spread across the six sprawling floors of the library.  My guess is that more information is revealed, the building will have been picked for no real particular reason other than its accessibility and, maybe even that its at the bottom of the street he was reportedly seen walking down, gun in hand.

Anyway, I am now home.  Tomorrow I'll walk back in the doors of PCL, and head down to the basement to my office.  The gunman picked the top floor to turn the weapon on himself, and I'll be glad that I'm not walking past taped-off areas to get to my desk.  But mostly I'll be glad to walk into my building and know all the faces will still be there.

God damn, but did we get lucky.

CNN
Austin American-Statesman
Daily Texan Online

So here's kind of what's happening

Hopefully my return will not include revelations about a child I was unaware I'd fathered

So I get these emails from a company called "Blog2Print" that's selling me the opportunity to buy bound copies of my blog(s) as a book.  You don't run a blog for as long as I ran Vol. 1 of League of Melbotis without the same sort of ego it takes to want to spend a few clams putting those volumes on the shelf for future generations to discover and enjoy.  But I'm also cheap, so I haven't actually done much but run the process to see what getting a full run in print would cost (and, sister, it ain't cheap).

But in looking at Ye Olde Blogge, I got a little misty-eyed.  Gone were the days of reader contests, pointless pet updates, personal commentary, stories of The League's employment, and all the stuff that made League of Melbotis a fun little clubhouse tucked in the boughs of the interwebs.  We used to wrap that stuff up with waxing rhapsodic about The Man of Steel, the comic reviews, movie pondering, etc...  and I guess, more or less, that seemed to work.

But that's not what we were doing here at The Signal Watch.  Here we decided, I think, that social media and my own growing concerns regarding broadcasting my private life to the internet made what we'd been doing at League of Melbotis no longer viable, and so maybe we'd dial it back a bit and have just a media-focus to the site.  But to my mind...  things just never gelled (I blame myself.  And Randy.).

While the sort of "personality blogging" that League of Melbotis represented has become generally considered passe, if not a bad idea, in this age of kids and their Tweeter and The Face Book, oh, hell...  none of that seems to be working super well, either.  And I don't mean just for me.

What today's bloggers are supposed to do is find a niche and say "here's my focus, I'm going to cover (fill in blank)", so you wind up as a comics blog, a movie blog, a political blog, what-have-you.  This is supposed to draw attention to your blog, and I believe increasing your readership to the triple digits  and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee. 

In its first incarnation, League of Melbotis (ie:  I)  never focused on any one thing very well (the downside of ADD), and while we're not embarrassed about what we did at The Signal Watch to date, all this fixation on keeping it semi-impersonal never really worked.

Some of you have been with us for a while, and I think I can be honest with you people:  This week I watched The Pixies play through an album I bought at age 14 and then became quite excited by the return of Elvira to the cable spectrum (she showed Night of the Living Dead last night and it was a lot of fun.  She's still got it.),  and these things got the hamster running on the old brain-wheel again.  Sometimes you can look at what used to work and you can try to do it again.  Sometimes Coke Classic is where its at.

That's not to say that this always works.  For every Star Trek: The Next Generation there's a The All-New WKRP in Cincinatti.  So, who knows?  maybe three or four weeks of this, and I'll be apologizing to everyone as I shut up shop once again.  But...

...as an experiment, we're going to try to go back to League of Melbotis-style blogging for a little while.  (Yay...?).

I know it sounds kind of wacky to not want to return to the old melbotis.com URL, but that's the way its going to be. If I'm a little weird about that, well...  sticking with The Signal Watch is my way of moving forward.

We hope you'll stick with us.  We're at a very different place today than we were at in 2003 in many, many ways, but so are all of you.

I don't plan to blog every day, by the way.  So, I suggest you prime your RSS reader or look on Facebook for links both back to this site and our official wacky links site.*

But I think I still remember how to do this, so let us give it a shot, shall we?

We've got some stuff to look forward to!

• A Green Lantern movie is set to come out
• a Flash movie is in pre-production
• there's a Jimmy Olsen feature in Action Comics (which is really good right now, by the way)
• UT football is off to an inauspicious start
• Colbert is being summoned to Capitol Hill
• Jamie is occasionally producing some videos
• Lucy has learned how to drive**
• and much, much more

I will be talking a bit about comics themselves, so... be forewarned.

Anyway, we hope you'll come by and set a spell.

*A special thanks to Randy (aka:  RHPT) for keeping the homefires burning with his always-excellent contributions to our sister site, Zee... Zee... Zee...

**this is not necessarily true.

So I Liked "Boardwalk Empire"

At League HQ, all Nations are welcome except Carrie.

A while back I saw an ad for "Boardwalk Empire" on HBO. Maybe five years ago HBO had the stanglehold on TV shows with short seasons, high production values, glimpses of nudity and people using the f-bomb, but Showtime has had its own programming for a while (I guess, I've never seen Dexter or Weeds), then AMC (of all networks) and FX got in the game. And, I guess, to a smaller extent, Cartoon Network and others.

To someone who grew up basically not feeling as if TV had much to offer that didn't feature transforming robots or a highly specialized strike-force battling a serpent-themed terrorist organization, these days, if you really sift through the chaffe, there's some good stuff out there. For example: Christina Hendricks Mad Men.

I think longtime readers know I'm not a Scorsese nut*, but I like the guy's work. Frankly, I hope he is involved beyond putting his name on the show. The first episode was ostensibly directed by Marty S., but I didn't really feel it except for a few moments. That's okay. What I'm really interested in is seeing Scorsese's feel for the expanse of time and the epic read of a character arc played out episodically over a few seasons.

Steve Buscemi as Enoch "Nucky" Thompson is an interesting choice. The show is basing itself somewhat on true-life crooks, criminals, politicians, etc... And according to the documentary HBO is running in connection with the premiere, its not actually clear that Enoch "Nucky" Johnson, the fellow who is the inspiration for Buscemi's character, was a true gangster so much as a particularly enthusiastic member of the East Coast Republican Machine of the time (see: Tammany Hall) and wasn't above using his position for profit. I'd expect that gray area is where Nucky's character is going to get interesting, and the pilot suggests Buscemi is up to the task.

Nucky Thompson doesn't tip

I was surprised the show went immediately for including such real-life luminaries of the underworld as Rothstein, Luciano and Capone, but, hey, it sets a tone.

I've never actually been to Atlantic City, and I have no idea how and where they're filming this thing, but as a period piece in a very specific urban area, the set and backgrounds when the characters are in exteriors (which I assume are largely CGI) are amazing.

Sure, it's only been one episode, but its a promising pilot as far as these things go. The pilot welcomes in 1920 as the temperance movement came to a head with the beginning of Prohibition, and explores how those with a mind for profit saw the new status quo as a golden opportunity before the law went into affect. The first episode sets multiple balls in motion from this single event as organizations fall into place, relationships are forged and tested, and the political machine of Atlantic City takes a step toward the shadier side.

Episode 2 runs Sunday evening.

Loyal Leaguers will note I've a fondness for the very wide category of gangster movies. Generally, I haven't been too interested in TV shows about ganagsters like Wiseguy, and I never had HBO during the period when Sopranos was on.  While I don't know what they'll be doing with the show, I do find the entire exercise of Prohibition such an interesting experiment in our concept of freedom as Americans, and, of course, the allegories one can draw to other and modern vices, it makes the "crime" story that much more interesting.
 
Due to cost restrictions, I don't think they've tried too many period piece crime or gangster shows (the only one that comes immediately to mind is Crime Story).  Its a gamble, but I think if they can retain the same level of detail from set design and costuming (heck Mad Men does it every week on a smaller scale), then they should be okay.

Seriously, will you look at that thing?

*do not dislike, which is what some numbskull will assume in the comments and I'll spend five comments saying "no, I like him fine, I just don't know his stuff that well"

Signal Watch on Indefinite Hiatus

I apologize for the lack of forewarning, but I am shuttering The Signal Watch.

I confess, I do not feel that I ever embraced this project with the same gusto with which I tackled League of Melbotis. Different places. Different times. Different priorities.

We'll maintain the LoM spot on Facebook (for the time being).

You can continue to view our wacky links at Zee... Zee... Zee...

Its been fun! But we're moving on.

Adios, amoebas.

Oh, for @#$%s Sake

Apparently Senator Nancy King of Maryland is now campaigning on the platform that if we cut teachers, kids will turn to... superhero comics!!!


NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here and here.

This particular ad insults me not because I thoroughly enjoyed that particular (and landmark) issue of Superman, but because they didn't even pick up any particular bad comics. Like "Hey, if your kids get a crappier education, they'll turn to Chromium Age holofoil covered comics, the new tulips of the investing world! NOOO!!!!"

The truth is, with superheroes a favored commodity among kids (and therefore, parents), this particular form of attack seems like a relic from 20 years ago, which kind of makes King look a little out of touch.

And as has been pointed out: at least these kids are reading. It might not be Silas Marner, but its not exactly these kids huffing paint, or even watching Scooby-Doo reruns because they're too lazy to fire up the XBox.

What King will expect least will be the onslaught of emails and letters to her campaign from adults all across the country who will insult her choice of campaign tactics.

And on the eve of "Read Comics in Public Day" and everything...

Everyone can @#$%ing Relax...

...I added @#$%ing Primer to my @#$%ing Netflix queue.

Its not available for instant viewing, so this could take a bit.

Want

Saturday is International "Read Comics in Public Day"

Well, it seems that somebody has decided that on Saturday, those of us who read comics should make a special effort to be seen conspicuously reading comics in public.

here. But, really, here.

I have mixed feelings on this.

1) I'm lazy. The idea of going out in 100+ degree heat to read when I have at least two sofas and a lovely bed upon which I can read in relative peace seems unnecessary.

2) I can't shake the feeling this is going to wind up a little more embarrassing than interesting once the press notices people in Flash t-shirts reading comics. There's a certain ambassadorship you're taking on by participating, and I kind of wonder what a lot of readers will say when questioned.

3) It assumes that people will invade your privacy, even notice what you're doing, or feel its odd to be seen reading a comic.

4) I also already read comics in public, in the few instances when I read in public (which is usually when I'm on a work trip).

5) There was also a school of thought circa 2004 that what would really promote comics would be posters and commercials featuring known comic-loving celebrities reading their favorite titles, sort of like those library "READ" posters. This always seemed like a... bad idea. It always seemed a little like a desperate appeal for acceptance from nerds.

6) I'd think this will have a limited appeal to a certain segment of the population, as per generating interest. Maybe 13-25 year olds. I don't see my coworkers saying "gee, where IS the local comic shop?"

BUT

1) A lot of people don't even know that comic shops really exist in their neck of the woods or that they can buy comics online or buy eComics.

2) It also can't hurt to have adults seen reading comics who don't fit the stereotypes that, frankly, fit a pretty small sector of the comic audience.

3) If readers are out there with more than one type of comic with them, letting people see the diversity of content is a good idea.



It doesn't really matter if I'm reading a comic or a standard old book, its always interesting to see how many people will ask you "what are you reading?". I usually suspect that its far more to inform them about you than it is because they're looking for something new to read, but that doesn't mean it doesn't spark small conversations.

I still remember when I was reading a Jack Kirby "Losers" reprint and the hostess at the restaurant confessed her adoration for some pretty grim ultraviolent 90's era comics. It was kind of charming. And, by the way, people always are amazed to see someone actually reading a Superman comic. There's definitely an impression that Superman isn't really around anymore.

So while I have my reservations, I might be taking a comic along with me to the pool on Saturday.

I saw 22 of 25 "classic" sci-fi films from the list on iO9

i09 posted a list of "25 classic science fiction movies that everybody must watch"

I had not seen:

1) Primer - never heard of it, so I'm calling shenanigans on "classic" here
2) Children of Men - came out at an awkward time, and I've meant to see it. Not sure anyone would call it "classic", though.
3) Moon - is really new and gets very mixed reviews (sorry, Jamie, its true). I think calling it classic is a stretch, but it is directed by Zowie Bowie (look it up), so that give sit extra sci-fi pedigree, I guess.

Mostly, the list doesn't feel very "classic". Firstly, its incredibly sparse on vintage film. Yes, "Forbidden Planet", "Metropolis" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" all still hold up remarkably well, and are instantly recognizable, but do we really need to jump from there to "Planet of the Apes"? You could fill the list with all kinds of stuff from the middle of the century. I mean: where the @#$% is Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, the most important sci-fi concepts of the 20th Century?

Not here, that's where.



And while I loved "District 9", its like time traveling to 1989 and declaring "Alien Nation" a sci-fi classic. And for goodness sake, Jamie is going to see "Inception" in the theater again this evening. Shouldn't something have had to make it to Blu-Ray before we declare it a "classic"? To use "classic", you need to point to more than classic tropes, you need to prove that the film endured and influenced other works.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

I'd include:

1) Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein - Look, Frankenstein is straight up science fiction. It might be scary, but so is "Alien".

2) Fahrenheit 451 - if we're going dystopian future, why not include the one about the future that's rapidly becoming our present?

3) Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind - You included ET, but not Close Encounters? That's just wrong. Also, Richard Dreyfus + potatoes gave me ammunition for dinner table antics for years.

4) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Nuclear powered submarine in the 19th Century.

5) War of the Worlds - Steven Spielberg is an amazing guy, but his remake doesn't hold a candle to the 1950's original (or the terrifying radio drama that caused all that hubbub in 1938).

6) The Time Machine - I don't love this movie, but even I'll agree it should have been included

7) Things to Come - Straight up, if you want to use the words "science fiction" and "classic" and "list" in the title of your article, this has to be on it. The fact that this wasn't on the list tells me Charlie Jane Anders needs to get herself to a video store.

8) The Fantastic Voyage - If Raquel Welch in a white lycra suit cannot get you to watch a movie about people miniaturized and placed inside a dude to laser out a blocked artery... I cannot help you.

9) Godzilla (and its many sequels) - Man mucking with forces beyond his understanding creates 30-story, atomic flame spewing (yet adorable) bi-pedal engine of destruction. There is nothing not awesome or classic about our buddy Gojira.

10) About half of the Ray Harryhausen Catalog - When he wasn't making swashbuckling monster movies, he was making movies about giant monsters that would eat you alive in your car. 20 Million Miles to Earth is pretty darn good.

11) Omega Man - Seemingly missing the point of the original novel, which was remade with the novel's title but yet another ending, this riff on I am Legend is a wild ride of a post-catastrophe zombiefied world in which Charlton Heston is the last sane man on Earth. As it should be.

12) Marooned - This movie is totally depressing, but it is also fiction about actual science. And unlike Moon, it will be watched long after the last hipster has hung up their skinny pants and ironic sunglasses.

13) When Worlds Collide - This movie has been imitated so much, I have no idea if people even know about the original.

14) Them! - The original Atomic Age cautionary tale. Also: Aliens totally ripped this movie off.

15) A Clockwork Orange - This is technically sci-fi. It happens in the future and uses technology that does not yet exist.

16) Buck Rogers - There aren't any straight up Buck Rogers movies. I'm only aware of the serials.

17) Flash Gordon - The Star Wars to Buck Rogers' Star Trek, Flash Gordon is far more fantasy than sci-fi, but its impossible to ignore the influence of Flash Gordon.

18) Akira - Lately its become trendy to bag on Akira. @#$% those guys. Akira is @#$%ing amazing. I don't care if, like all anme from the era, it totally falls apart in the 3rd act.


Anyway, I could go on.

A very partial list of classics I haven't seen:

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Destination Moon
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Rocketship X-M
Donovan's Brain


More recent sci-fi films that I think will endure?

Donnie Darko
28 Days Later
Idiocracy
Total Recall (because I love Total Recall)
Jurassic Park
12 Monkeys
The Abyss


There are also films that are cinematic favorites that seem to have been ignored as they're not American:

Alphaville
Stalker
Solaris
La Jetee
City of Lost Children
Delicatessen
Until the End of the World
Wings of Desire

So what do you think?

Why Waco?

Tomorrow I'm headed for Waco again. It seems I've not really explained why I'm going to Waco so often, or why I travel for business.

I work with a multi-university digital library consortium. All of our members provide different resources, and our friends at Baylor provide an excellent training facility at the edge of campus where we show staff from our member institutions how to use software provided by my group.

Its exactly that interesting. And when I'm traveling elsewhere, its to visit colleagues at various universities and see what they're up to and figure out how we can better support each other. So I might be visiting Texas A&M Kingsville one day, and then drive down to visit UT Brownsville the next.

I get to see a lot of Texas and listen to audio books. Its not bad. I just wind up drinking a lot of gas station coffee and eating in a lot of hotel restaurants.

And I wear a tie sometimes, which I still find funny at age 35. But ties inspire a lot more confidence than t-shirts with "The Flash" emblazoned on the front.


a staple of my work attire

Because I work in a basement in an office with a window whose blinds we keep closed, and I work amongst librarians, a people who seemingly have no dress code, the wide array of superhero t-shirts isn't really a big deal. Most people are polite and don't even ask about the superheroes poking out from behind my button down shirts. And when they do, it usually ends with "I'm sorry, you know... I don't really want to know."

Every area within a university is slightly different. Engineers sort of operate one way, liberal arts folks another, and while there are many stereotypes about librarians which I see confirmed, they are a varied bunch. But it is truly amazing that they can all agree that you should stop making that racket, because people are trying to read.

Library science is an interesting field. Its basically all about making sure as much information is available as possible, and as easy to find as possible. So your average employee at a research library is sort of like Google, only with glasses and sweater sets. My job falls into the twilight world of how universities are figuring out how to use technology to bring research data not just to other scholars, but to the world, leveraging the technologies that are out there, but managing information about those resources and insuring the integrity of that material. So... you know, wacky times.

We tend to keep our eyes on the eBook industry, the struggles of print journals, integrity of electronic publication, long-term storage concepts, and lots of things that people are still trying to figure out now that you can distribute anything you want via the internet. Its just a matter of making sure people find it.

Anyhow, that's why I'm going to Waco. Also, I might try to go to the Dr. Pepper Museum.