Last week, I shared with you my preliminary schedule for Chicon 7, but there have been a few changes made, and this is where you actually will end up seeing me. (Well, if you’re also going to Worldcon, that is.)

Friday, Aug. 31, 9:00 a.m.
Strolling with the Stars

Friday Aug. 31, 12:00 p.m.
Autographing

Saturday, Sept. 1, 12:00 p.m.
The 50 Year Old Teenager
In 2012, Spider-Man turned 50 with the appearance of a new film, various comic titles, television titles, and a musical playing on Broadway. This panel looks at Peter Parker’s perennial appeal, reminisces about his adventures and relationships, and just fangeeks all over the webslinger.

Sunday, Sept. 2, 1:30 p.m.
Kaffeeklatsche

Monday, Sept. 3, 1:30 p.m.
Reading

Note that my reading—originally scheduled for Friday at 10:00 a.m., when you’d likely be asleep—has been moved to Monday at 1:30 p.m., after many of you will have left.

I hope to see you there anyway!

Just in case there are some of you who still have doubts that Twitter and/or Facebook can make the life of the flesh even sweeter (well, I don’t mean you, of course, but that other person over there), let me tell you about the visit Irene and I made last Monday to Wheeling, West Virginia’s Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum.

It was going to be the last official stop on our vacation, after seeing those two Frank Lloyd Wright homes and those three operettas, and I commented online that we were shortly to be heading that way. Within minutes, our friend Mindy Klasky popped up to say that if we did happen to go, she’d appreciate a photo, because that’s where her father had donated his collection of hundreds of Monopoly board variations.

Well … now we had to get over there!

I was stunned by how magnificent the restored Victorian-era building was. I hadn’t known what to expect. I thought we’d see something similar to the small wood-frame building that housed the collection of the Yokohama Tin Toy Museum. But it was nothing of the kind. (more…)

Irene and I were in Wooster, Ohio last weekend attending three operettas put on as part of the Ohio Light Opera‘s 2012 season. Irene’s been wanting to go for years, and this year we finally made it happen. The company’s appeal to us isn’t its productions of such shows as The Mikado—I mean, I’m sure they did an excellent job, but if you have a hankering to see The Mikado, it’s not that difficult a thing to do wherever you happen to be—but in lesser performed shows, such as Emerich Kálmán’s Miss Springtime, which I believe hasn’t been performed anywhere in the world since the mid-’90s.

One thing I’ve got to say about attending performances of old-timey operettas—doing so sure made me feel young! I was one of the few guys in the audience who was neither bald nor wearing a toupee. Plus, I didn’t need a cane or walker to make it to my seat. I was a kid again!

Mentioning all the geezers who were there probably isn’t the best way to convince you to also head to the Ohio Light Opera, but still, you should. There’s a reason these were such smashes in their day, which means not only will you be able to enjoy some stellar performances, you can also try to figure out why they were such major hits.

I wish I could share recordings of the Ohio Light Opera productions, but since those don’t exist, here are some other singers performing numbers from the three shows we saw. (more…)

Last night, after I made my reservation for today’s lunch at Family Meal—our second visit to Chef Bryan Voltaggio’s new restaurant In Frederick, Maryland—I discovered that my post about our first visit had been picked up by Eater, which had gathered the early reviews from the restaurant’s first month of operation. Each of the excerpts was given a header, and mine was “The Rave,” which indeed it was.

My report on our second visit won’t be quite as positive, though in a bifurcated way, because it’s almost as if Irene and I had eaten in different restaurants.

Technically, we were eating in different restaurants, because we arrived a few minutes before our 11:30 reservation, and breakfast service stops and the lunch menu takes over at exactly 11:30 a.m. But because Irene was interested in breakfast, and I was interested in lunch, and we were on the cusp, we were allowed to order from both menus.

Irene ordered waffles, without the blueberries or syrup they usually came with, wanting only butter and honey, plus biscuits and a glass of milk. I’ll get the bad news out of the way first, by stating that her two plates arrived without the honey, and the server had to go back to the kitchen to retrieve some, plus, even though at the time the order was taken Irene was asked whether she wanted the milk then or when the meal came and she replied that she wanted the milk with the meal, the meal came without the milk, and so Irene had to sit for a few minutes waiting for the milk to be brought to her. Those may sound like small things, but any time you have to wait to dig in, that does damage the experience.

And it gets worse … even though the biscuits we’d had with our fried chicken during our previous visit were a light golden color and dense but delicate, Irene’s biscuits this time were a dark brown, and crusty, and hard. Oh, sure, they were still made from wonderful ingredients, but they were rock-like, and she felt she could have used one as a weapon. (more…)

One month ends, and another begins, so let’s see what treats my subconscious left me in July, shall we? I was visited by Andre the Giant, John Kessel, Kevin Sorbo, David Hartwell, Harlan Ellison, Snookie, and more.

July 2012 Dreams

I dreamt I arrived late to acting class, and my partner, who wasn’t happy, had to explain the teacher’s instructions about our coming scene. 30 Jul

I dreamt I was in a room with two identical incarnations of my mother. I tried and failed to figure out which needed to go to the hospital. 30 Jul

I dreamt I was on staff at Marvel Comics discussing Cosmic Cube variations — Cosmic Cone, anyone? — with Danny Fingeroth. 30 Jul

I dreamt that as I walked a city street, David Hartwell approached, accompanied by Andre the Giant. I never learned why they were together. 30 Jul

I dreamt I arrived at a play to find the OTHER Scott Edelman’s name already on a volunteer sign-up, which I feared would lead to confusion. 30 Jul

I dreamt that as Stephen Colbert ran through a blooming lotus garden, I jogged a path alongside it, until we met at garden’s end. 30 Jul

I dreamt that as a I wandered a city, large dogs would stop and attempt to deliver a message. But sadly, I could not decipher their speech. 29 Jul

I dreamt I was being hunted by those towering X-Men Sentinels. No idea why they were after me — I wasn’t a mutant — but I hid anyway. 29 Jul

I dreamt I jogged through a city, and after several blocks, realized — Hey! I’ve never been able to run this well before! So I woke up. 28 Jul

I dreamt that at the end of a bad day, I remembered that though I cancelled that morning’s trip, I never called the airline about my flight. 28 Jul (more…)

If there’s one thing we all know about the TARDIS, it’s that it’s bigger on the inside. But what I was horrified to learn recently when Irene and I visited two famous Frank Lloyd Wright buildings is that whatever the man designed was smaller on the inside.

Irene and always wanted to see Fallingwater, and so last week we took a vacation day and traveled there, also taking in the nearby Wright home Kentuck Knob. Up until our tours, we’d only known of these places from their beautiful exteriors. So we were stunned on Friday to discover how uncomfortable, unfriendly, and positively inhuman the interiors of these properties were.

What first disconcerted me when we moved inside Fallingwater was that there wasn’t a single spot in which I would feel comfortable simply sitting and reading a book … except outside on one of the terraces, and then only during daylight hours. Inside, all of the lighting was indirect and of low wattage. In one of the bedrooms, the tour guide actually told us that it was Wright’s intention that when you entered that room, you’d feel closed in, and your gaze would immediately be drawn outside. So these rooms were being made intentionally uncomfortable in some insane bid to bring one closer to Nature.

The interior of Kentuck Knob was, depressingly, even more unfit for human habitation. Dark, dreary, with some of the corridors only 21″ wide. While a few of the rooms in these houses were bearable, none of them seemed warm or inviting. I continually felt a sense of oppressiveness as the walls and ceilings pressed down upon me. (more…)

You’ve read about what I plan to eat while I’m in Chicago—but how about what I’ll be doing at Chicon 7, which is what’s bringing me to that city in the first place?

The Chicon 7 Programming Department just released its preliminary schedule, and this is where you might end up seeing me, depending on how things work out between now and the time things are finalized.

Friday, Aug. 31, 10:00 a.m.
Reading

Friday Aug. 31, 12:00 p.m.
Autographing

Friday, Aug. 31, 7:30 p.m.
Marvel Comics Super-Heroes from the 1960s
In less than a decade (1961-1969), Stan Lee’s Marvel Comics created iconic super-heroes that have only grown in popularity over the decades. What was unique about the Marvel super-heroes that have led to them becoming such a phenomenon?

Saturday, Sept. 1, 12:00 p.m.
The 50 Year Old Teenager
In 2012, Spider-Man turned 50 with the appearance of a new film, various comic titles, television titles, and a musical playing on Broadway. This panel looks at Peter Parker’s perennial appeal, reminisces about his adventures and relationships, and just fangeeks all over the webslinger.

Sunday Sept. 2, 1:30 p.m.
Kaffeeklatsche

Check back between now and the con to see how my schedule settles out.

You would probably not have liked hanging out with me during these past 36 hours. That’s because I was so giddy about getting tickets to the Chicago restaurant Alinea that wherever my conversations with Irene headed, they always looped back to some aspect of the restaurant, whether it was the quest to get a table, the kind of food served there, or how thrilled I was to have actually scored tickets.

As I told you last month when I was first contemplating where’d I’d be eating during the Chicago Worldcon next month:

There are a few other gastronomical wonders I’m hoping for, such as the playground that is Alinea and the apparent perfection that is Next, but neither of those is a certainty. In fact, far from being locks, they may be impossibilities. But I can dream, can’t I?

Amazing, both of those dreams are going to come true!

The reason I’ve been so insufferable is this— (more…)

I know all about Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel’s 1975 letter putting a curse on the company that wouldn’t do right by him. After all, it wasn’t history to me, as I was on staff at Marvel Comics at the time, and we were all well aware of the letter that began—

It has been announced in show business trade papers that a multi-million dollar production based on the Superman comic strip is about to be produced. It has been stated that millions of dollars were paid to the owners of Superman, National Periodical Publications, Inc., for the right to use the famous comic book super-hero in the new movie. The script is by Mario Puzo, who wrote The Godfather and Earthquake. The film is to have a star-filled cast.

I, Jerry Siegel, the co-originator of Superman, put a curse on the Superman movie! I hope it super-bombs. I hope loyal Superman fans stay away from it in droves. I hope the whole world, becoming aware of the stench that surrounds Superman, will avoid the movie like a plague.

And ended—

WHAT AN INFERNAL, SICKENING SUPER-STENCH EMANATES FROM NATIONAL PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS, INC. We hope the public will never forget this when seeing the Superman character, or National Periodical comic books. Do not patronize Superman because of this injustice.

Amazing, huh? If you want to read the whole thing, you can find it here.

But what I never knew (which surprises me) is that there was also intriguing correspondence out there related to Bill Finger, the man responsible for most of what we like about Batman.

Thankfully, Marc Tyler Nobleman, author of Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, has enlightened me about those letters and the scenario that spawned them. (more…)

According to a full-page map of the globe (well, half of it, anyway) in the December 19, 1914 issue of The Graphic, “a series of operations … have swept half the world clear of Germans,” “peace in the Pacific has been attained,” and “the commerce of all nations can proceed with safety throughout the vast expanses from the coasts of Mozambique to those of South America.”

Whew! Sure glad Vice-Admiral Sturdee took care of that!

Check out the battle details below.

Aren’t you glad Germany never gave the world any further trouble?