Wubba lubba dub-dub mo fo’s!*

Subtitle: An examination of the third episode of the second season of “Rick and Morty” entitled “Auto Erotic Assimilation” with an eye towards encouraging nominating this episode for the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form, to be presented at MidAmeriCon II, the 74th World Science Fiction Convention.

Note: This is packed full of spoilers.
For the tl;dr folks, it is also not short.
You Have Been Warned.

I’m glad that I held off writing about Rick and Morty until Season 2, Episode 3, “Auto Erotic Assimilation“, which you can watch by clicking right there (or elsewhere), written by Ryan Ridley, produced by J. Michael Mendel, directed by Bryan Newton, created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon. I was frankly a little worried. I initially found the first two episodes a bit lacking, probably because the bar had been set so fracking high throughout season 1. My finding was dead wrong. Thinking back to the episodes in season 1 and comparing them to season 2, I think I can safely say that a lot of season 1 was about the creators / writers / directors proving that they had the deep knowledge of science and science fiction to intelligently pull off a series like this without falling into the realm of easy SF clichés, unless it’s done on purpose.

Season 2 was if anything, even more brilliant, because in season 2 the poo hits the squantchy fan. That shizzle got real. And episode 3 was the fracking most real, at least up until that point in the season. I believe I have identified the episode I’ll nominate for this year’s Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form Hugo.

You might be asking yourself, “What’s a Hugo?” Simply put, the Hugo Awards are science fiction’s most prestigious award, are awarded annually, and are voted upon by both attending and supporting members of the annual World Science Fiction Convention, a.k.a. Worldcon.

Not sure if you can nominate for this year’s Hugos?

• On or before January 31, 2016 11:59 p.m. PST, were you:
  • an attending or supporting member of MidAmeriCon II, the 2016 World Science Fiction Convention to be held in Kansas City, MO, USA?
  • an attending or supporting member of Worldcon 75, the 2017 World Science Fiction Convention to be held in Helsinki, Finland?
  • an attending or supporting member of Sasquan, the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention which was held in Spokane, WA, USA?

Answer “yes” to any of the above and yes, you can nominate and vote. If you would like to print out and mail your nomination form, download it here. If you want to vote online, contact the MidAmeriCon II Hugo Administrators Dave McCarty and Will Frank.

All of that being said (yes, yes, I know) what to my mind makes”Auto Erotic Assimilation” a Hugo worthy episode? Well, what’s the episode about?

Introduction – While traveling through space in Rick’s home made spaceship, Rick, Morty, and Summer come across a distress signal from an alien starship. Rick intercepts and boards the starship with the intention of looting it, but instead he comes across the ship’s surviving crew members, who explain their planet has been taken over by an assimilating hive-mind, before the aforementioned hive mind attacks and assimilates the rest of the crew.The hive-mind knows Rick, who awkwardly admits that he and the mind, named Unity, used to “date.”

Main Plot – On Unity’s planet, Rick and Unity passionately rekindle their relationship while Summer and Morty ponder questions of free will, sin, redemption and senseless hatred. As the planet descends first into an exotic drug fueled orgy, then into an exotic race hate fueled riot, Unity realized exactly how bad a couple it and Rick make and dumps him.

Sub-plot – Simultaneously, on Earth, Morty and Summer’s parents, Beth (Rick’s daughter) and Jerry (Beth’s husband), discover under their house, Rick’s underground lair. Inside of the lair, they discover Rick’s monstrous imprisoned alien creature. They soon begin vicious bickering, to the point that the creature, fed up with their arguing, breaks free of his restraints and berates them both before leaving.

Epilogue – Losing Unity devastates Rick, leaving him in a state of mind so broken that he attempts suicide. Yes, on screen.

You can read the complete plot here – http://rickandmorty.wikia.com/wiki/Auto_Erotic_Assimilation#Plot

From this single episode we can see that Rick and Morty is steeped in deep science fiction lore. Within the first couple of minutes not only does this episode build upon every book / movie / television episode we’ve seen where the protagonists decide that exploring a derelict spaceship is a good thing to do, we’re also given a very Ricksonian reason for going ahead and doing so. Of course, the proof that no matter the rationalization it’s still a bad idea comes in this case straight out of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Well, that and a telenovela filtered through Futurama.

The concept of hive minds has been examined in science fiction at least as far back as 1930, as seen in Olaf Stapledon’s “Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future.” We’ve feared them as presented in the book, “The Midwich Cuckoos” later adapted as “Village of the Damned.” Perhaps we envied them a bit as the Over-Mind in “Childhood’s End.” We’ve used their name as a pejorative, like the Borg from “Star Trek.” I’m pretty sure I’ve never considered the possibilities presented by having them (it?) as a lover, especially if it (they?) had no interest in adding me to their collective but was interested in the singular me.

“Auto Erotic Assimilation” continues science fiction’s long tradition of using the genre’s unconventional settings to explore the more and less conventional aspects of the human condition. For example, sexuality. If you’re quick on the uptake, you soon understand that Rick considers the variety of species and genders unified by Unity to be a sexual feature, not a bug. If you don’t get it at first, the screenwriters have included a short, uncomfortable and hilarious scene to make sure you understand. Also explored: utopias, politics, dystopias, parenting, warfare, free will, personal pronouns, capitalism, exo-virology, marriage, p.t.s.d., and many more. All extremely skillfully packed into 23 mind bending minutes.

Of course, no amount of bloviation on my part can replace watching the episode with your own five eyes and judging for yourself. You can either wait until the series goes into re-runs or watch the episode on the Cartoon Network’s [adult swim] website if you are a cable or satellite subscriber. If you’re web savvy, you might even be able to stream it by grabbing a handy link from somewhere.

Please comment and tell me. Have I made a good start on making the case for nominating this episode of “Rick and Morty” for a Hugo? If not, what am I missing? If so, after you’ve watched the episode yourself, will you consider nominating it?

*The title of this post is intimately (see what I did there?) tied into the themes explored in “Auto Erotic Assimilation” in ways not obvious unless you’ve carefully watched Season 1. In particular, season 1, episode 11 “Ricksy Business.”

De Aequilibrio Mentis Et Corporis (Mind and Body in Equilibrium)

The Realization of the Situation

“Oh my glob, what to do. 50. 50 orbits of old Sol. 47 billion orbital kilometers plus who knows how many around the galactic center and away or towards the galactic ecliptic. So how do I celebrate this lifetime landmark?” That’s a fairly good approximation of what was bouncing around in my head in December of 2010, when I passed 50 years old.

I’d long made a habit of attempting one big new thing each year. It always had to be something I’d never before attempted. Never attempted because I’d never found the time to do it, or because I was convinced it was beyond my innate abilities, or because I was simply afraid to do it out of fear of failure. That’s how I’d ended up in grad school. That’s how I’d ended up moving across the continent from sunny Southern California to New England. That’s how I ended up learning to strap a highly engineered composite plank to my feet and slide down snowy mountains sideways. That’s how I started volunteering as a worker and panelist at cons.

I wanted something special to celebrate the exit from my first half century of life and entry into the next 50 years. I decided to steer clear of the stereotypical male mid-life crisis insanity. So no selling of my possessions to go live in a yurt on the Mongolian steppes. No adoption of strange religious practices. No running out to purchase an insanely expensive and insanely fast sports car. No illicit affairs with young men half my age.

The Search for a Solution

So then, what do do?

I decided that I would be guided by things I was afraid to do and that others around me would find uncharacteristic. There’s nothing quite so satisfying as surprising others even as you pleasantly, simultaneously surprise yourself.

I’d grown up as a queer, geeky, science fiction loving kid who hated playing sports, in particular organized team sports. I’d totally bought into the stereotype of the anti-sports bookworm. My heroes had names like Niven, Harrison, Silverberg, Ellison, Asimov not Goodrich or Robinson or Namath.

I was too short for basketball, plus, I intensely disliked the cultural expectation that I should love, play and excel in the sport. I was too lightweight for football. I didn’t have enough upper body strength for baseball. As a closeted young gay kid, I found wrestling, gymnastics and swimming far too emotionally and sexually dangerous. Far too fraught with the the danger of outing.

Plus, even at the tender age of 13, I thought I saw in my parents the germ the possibility of their becoming the type of overwrought, overenthusiastic sports parents that make the lives of their kids into hell. Adding the pressure to exceed in a sport on top of barely endurable pressures for exemplary academic performance would have been disastrous.

All of this added up to decades of studiously avoiding team sports. Big stuff. Fertile ground from which would spring my personal foray into unknown territory. Team sports.

The Achievement of Action

But which team sport?

I do not remember where I first came across the quote attributed to Oscar Wilde; “Rugby is a barbaric played by gentlemen. Football is a gentlemanly game played by barbarians.”, nor do I remember where or how I was first made aware of the Boston Ironsides Rugby Football Club. What I do remember was my first workout with the team on a winter’s night at a high-school gym in Cambridge. I thought I was in good shape. I was oh so wrong. I didn’t make it though 1/2 of a not particularly tough workout. In spite of the reassurances of the guys at practice (“Don’t sweat it. At least you didn’t throw up like lots of guys do”), I was embarrassed, chagrined, humbled. But I promised to come back in 6 months at least ready to practice, if not to play.

What’s a geek to do? Here, I’d found a sport and a team open to a total neophyte, open and eagerly welcome to LGBT members, and I wasn’t ready to play. So I did what any good academically oriented geek would do. I studied. I learned. I put into practice what I learned.

I kept my promise to myself and joined the Boston Ironsides rugby team 6 months later and set into motion chains of events I hadn’t foreseen.

The Consequences of Choices

All of this could not help but have knock-on effects across the breadth of my life. Some foreseen, some welcome, others not so and not so much.

Even though camaraderie was one of the things I was seeking, I wasn’t quite prepared for the intensity of the feeling. I’d argue that something intensely primal is awakened when a discrete groups of humans strives towards a common goal, particularly when that striving involves struggling through ignorance to understanding, through physical exertion and exhaustion towards strength, through physical discomfort and injury to healing. I was surprised to find myself thinking thoughts like, “I’d bleed for these guys”, and equally surprised by the depth of feeling mixed in with those thoughts.  It even re-ignited my interest in guided imagery, hypnosis and NLP through my discovery of Michael J. Emery’s audio files for athletes: “Advanced Sports Imagery for Athletes”.  Who knew?

The End of the Beginning

Time to bring this to an end. What better way than with the typical “lessons learned”?  So then, what did I learn?

• I learned that here in the U.S., rugby harbors it’s own form of geekery.  This is a big difference between U.S. rugby and rugby in other countries.
• A sense of belonging is a powerful thing for a primate.  I guess I have more tribes than SF Fandom.
• I’ve long been more than a bit afraid of my aggressive side. I’ve been afraid of losing control, of doing something horrible.  It’s a bad lesson I’d learned from my parents.  The fear is still there but attenuated, restrained by the evidence of praxis.
• I’ve come to believe that the UFP would have an awesome rugby side.  So would the Klingon Empire.  The Klingon’s, however, might need to be reminded that no weapons are allowed and that the limbs of opponents are not to be ripped off.
  • United Federation of Planets rugby jerseys would be awesome.  Klingon Empire rugby jerseys would be off the hook.
• I had to learn how to train towards a specific goal.
• I had to learn how to recover from an injury.
• I had to learn when to acknowledge the march of time, admit the increasing length of recovery time, and retire.
• I had to learn how to lose gracefully, something I’d never before been good at.
• I learned that there are things I’ve never before considered doing, that I can not just do, but love doing.

Boston Ironsides Spring 2015 Match Schedule

Boston Ironsides Spring 2015 Match Schedule

As I find out more info, and as the season progresses, I’ll fill in the chart.

Man of the Match (I still love “Bitch of the Pitch” more) links will be updated as the Ironsides website is updated.

Kickoff times in parentheses are unofficial and based on previous matches / tournaments.

DATE	IRONSIDES VS…	PITCH	KICKOFF TIME	SCORE	MAN OF THE MATCH
April 11	Rutland	HOME: Moakley Field	1:00pm	0-19	Jeff Merritt
April 18	Monadnock	HOME: Moakley Field	1:00pm	0-47	Wiremu Kiwi’au Diaz
April 25-26	AWAY: Colonial Cup, Edgely Field, Fairmont Park,  Philadelphia  PA vs. Pitch Kickoff Score Man of the Match Pool Charlotte Royals Pitch B 09:30  0-41 Atlanta Bucks Pitch B 10:30  0-17 Consolation DC Scandals  Pitch A  14:10  72-0
May 2-3	AWAY: NERFU Cup, Fort Adams State Park, Newport RI vs. Pitch Kickoff Score Man of the Match Pool Springfield Rifles  3  10:00  0-82 Black River Mens  —  15:15  0-32 Tournament n/a n/a
May 9	BYE	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
May 16	Cape Cod	AWAY: Camp Good News	13:00
May 23	TBD	AWAY:	TBD

Anti Gaydar

So, when I was a nerdling combing the shelves of my school and public libraries for books that looked like they hadn’t been checked out in decades (I imagine I was hoping to stumble across an ancient book of spells or some musty alchemical tome) I came across some books on the Duke University ESP studies conducted in the 1950’s.

Of course, I checked them ALL out.  And kept renewing them, re-reading them until I got a reasonable grasp of the statistics.  In the over four decades that have passed between then and now, most of what I read there has faded into vague notions that ESP of some sort probably does exist, but one set of conclusions arising from their data blew my juvenile mind.  The claimed concrete evidence for anti-esp. A small subset of their subjects consistently scored significantly below chance when trying to predict die rolls, viewing Zener cards, etc. Remember the movie “The Cooler”?  Yes,

What does this have to do with me and the title of this post?  I’m convinced that I exhibit anti-gaydar/bidar.  When given no other information than my own personal observations of a man, if my first guess is that he is probably gay or bi or somewhere not on the hetero-normative end of the Kinsey Scale, then, more likely than not, he will turn out to be absolutely straight, as in attracted exclusively to females. Even if I try and second or third guess myself, I end up wrong.

Yes, it is in fact annoying.

The Transmogrification of a Geek

Once upon a time there was a queer, geeky kid who hated playing sports.

He was too short for basketball, plus he hated the cultural expectation that he should love and play the sport.

He was too lightweight for football, he didn’t have enough upper body strength for baseball, he found wrestling and gymnastics and swimming far too emotionally dangerous.

Additionally, even at the tender age of 13, he saw in his parents the germ, the possibility of becoming THOSE kind of sports parents.  Adding pressures to exceed in a sport on top of the already barely endurable pressures for exemplary academic performance would have been disastrous.

So, p.e. was endured through elementary and junior high school, except for 7th grade when his p.e. teacher was a 20-something blond bodybuilder (think late 60’s Aquaman), and avoided in high school.

Fast forward 32 years.

I’ve been snowboarding for over 8 years, a recreational mountain biker for much longer, and while I still have no affinity for playing the aforementioned team sports (I’ll watch college football), I’ve developed a hankering for Rugby.

Yes Rugby.

I don’t just want to watch, I want to play. A team sport.

And so, on this coming Tuesday, I’ll attend my first practice with the Boston Ironsides, a member of the International Gay Rugby Association and Board (IGRAB (yeah, i know)).   I bought a practice ball (above left) & mouth guard & practice shoes yesterday.  I still need to buy boots.  I have more kit pieces arriving Monday or Tuesday.

Gods above and below, what have I become.

Outryders 2010 – 2011 On-Mountain Schedule (New England Locations)

Here’s the New England portion of the Outryders 2010-2011 on-mountain schedule

Awesomeness

Gaylaxicon 2009 Report for Con-News.Com, 2 of 2

The following was originally published on http://con-news.com on 11/02/2009

Well, as promised, or threatened, I’m back for part two of my Gaylaxicon 2009 recapitulation. Thank you for returning for more. You know, perhaps this isn’t really a recap, because, part of the definition of a recap is “concise”, which this isn’t. Synopsis doesn’t fit either, for the same reason. Call it a wordy review. In any case, on with the whole ADHD soaked show!

Gaylactic Jeopardy! 1 of 2 – Drew Post with contestants David Kaplan and two others still to be identified.

Gaylaxicon has it’s own game show, Gaylactic Jeopardy, played just like the television show, except that the answers are all at the very least, genre related, though not necessarily BGLT related. Drew Post was ebullient as the master of ceremonies, exuding that bit of Canadian-ness required to be a Jeopardy! host. Nersi Nikakhtar kept everyone honest by keeping score and a young gentleman named Richard Martin who gracefully revealed the answers. Dave Kaplan and others (please help me out with names) were faced with topics like; Author! Author!, ABC (Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke), Twilight and Comic Book Movies. And what was the general consensus?
A) The whole thing was damned funny.
B) Gentlemen, you need to read more.
C) Sparkly vampires suck, and not in a good way.
D) Shy geeks who read need to not be so shy, so get up and participate.

Just sayin’.

Spectrum Awards – Rob Gates [M], Carl Cipra, Warren Rochelle
The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards honor outstanding works of science fiction, fantasy and horror, that include significant positive explorations of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered characters, themes, or issues.

My Gaylaxicon Report for Con-News.Com – 1 of 2

This convention re-cap originally appeared in Con-News.Com (http://con-news.com) on 10/26/2009.

The 11^th Gaylaxicon was a convention with a difference… and what a difference! Even Marlin was surprised, and he’s used to REAL conventions. With apologies to Monty Python.

This is, of course, not quite fair. Gaylaxicon – http://www.gaylaxicon.org – is a real convention, a small but well run convention, which travels about North America, and is run by local chapters of the Gaylactic Network, an organization of BGLT (or LGBT, or GLBT (I’ll use the alphabetical)) science fiction /fantasy/horror/gaming clubs. And that, my friends, is quite a difference, a difference which makes me tingle all over, makes me willing to brave airport security, makes me shiver with… anticipation. There was no way I wasn’t going to go. Hey, this was a meeting of my tribe within a tribe.

The trip to Minneapolis from Manchester, NH was uneventful. I have come to believe that that working out, having a buzz cut, and wearing a tee shirt with an NYPD patch on it (purchased right after 9/11) helps. Plus, you get to surreptitiously check out who’s surreptitiously checking you out. I have reason to believe that this will work for women too. Just sayin’. During the ride, I put a serious dent in Iain M. Bank’s The Algebraist, which a seriously engaging but seriously dense space opera. I still have about 100 pages to go.

Anyway, I arrived in Minneapolis MN (my first time ever in the state and city) the day before the convention tired but happy. My roommate for the convention, artist and bon vivant, Rob Allison, soon joined me. Now, normally travelling leaves me tired and grumpy, but I am unable to watch people struggle with lugging heavy objects, like a giant, gold ribbon covered rocket, without lending a hand. Suddenly, I was volunteering. I slept very well that night. Yes, I turned in early & did not join the evening’s (or any evening’s for that matter) bar crawl through what some thought was the best of what gay Minneapolis had to offer. As far as I was concerned, Gaylaxicon 2009 was the best of what gay Minneapolis had to offer.

A lot more after the break.

Gaylaxicion 2009 – 2 of 2

Well, I’ve posted the second 1/2 of my Gaylaxicon 2009 review. I’m missing a few bits, but I should get them shortly.

What you been feeding that boy, Mrs. Stamberg?

If you bottled it, you’d make a million.

So, have you seen this man on the telly? Say, on the “Tears, Bones and Desire” , episode of Six Feet Under?

Josh Stamberg. Yeow.

The man is simply gorgeous. And he can act. And he has a brain in his head, but then what else would you expect from Susan Stamberg’s son.

Let’s hope he comes to do a play in Boston. Let’s hope he does more movies. He definitely deserves more exposure, not necessarily in his tighty whities, though that definitely wouldn’t hurt. 😉

Ummmm, Film Goodness

The Brattle Theater, the revival/art theater to which Ron and I belong, is hosting the Boston Fantastic Film Festival. I know where I’m going to be next weekend. Along , of course, with my friends in the Boston chapter of the Gaylactic Network.