Tagged: New York City

Mindy Newell: Computer Glitch

newell-art-131117-150x137-5821016“You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’”

George Bernard Shaw

“Back to Methuselah” (1921)

President Barak Obama is a visionary. Which is great. It’s important for the President of the United States to be a visionary, to be able to inspire. That’s how Barak Obama became President in 2008.

But once elected, it’s not enough to be a visionary. You need to know how to put that vision into effect.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy knew how to do that. Ronald Wilson Reagan knew how to do that.

President Barak Obama – and I can’t believe I’m saying this – does not.

The Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, is in real trouble. The website is a disaster – where is Oracle when we need her? – and those who have been able to sign up are finding that their personal health care providers are not participating and that only a limited amount of hospitals are participants. A woman speaking to Brian Lehrer on NPR a couple days ago told him that the only hospital she can go to under the ACA is Lenox Hill in Manhattan, and while Lenox Hill is a very fine institution, the woman lives out on the Island, as in Long. (And for those of you not in the metropolitan New York City area, trust me, when you are sick enough to need hospital care, you do not want to drive on the Long Island Expressway as your life is ticking away and you are crawling along the asphalt at as much as 10 miles an hour.) Meanwhile insurance companies are happily cancelling policies because they don’t measure up to the ACA’s parameters because the premiums for ACA approved policies are more expensive.

(Once again the insurance companies have figured out how to make a buck off of people’s miseries – I can just hear the board of directors of Horizon, Aetna, Oxford, Cigna, and all the rest at their meetings: “Okay, no more lifetime caps, no more pre-existing condition bans, but here, look at Paragraph IV for example – everyone has to have maternity care in their plan, which means we can charge the client for that even if the client is male. And that’s just Paragraph IV. Yes, no worries, we can make up for any potential losses and we have the ACA and the President to thank for that.”) And the Repugnanticans are having a field day, gleefully attacking our Marxist, Maoist, Socialist, Kenyan Muslim President every which way they can. And though you, my faithful readers, know that I am a staunch Democrat and supporter of the man currently living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I gotta say…

What the fuck, man!

You go and approve the hiring of a Canadian tech company to build the web site? And to make matters even worse, it’s a company that has a botched record! To quote from the Washington Times (granted, a very conservative paper, but they are right in this):

“Canadian provincial health officials last year fired the parent company of CGI Federal, the prime contractor for the problem-plagued Obamacare health exchange websites, the Washington Examiner has learned.

“CGI Federal’s parent company, Montreal-based CGI Group, was officially terminated in September 2012 by an Ontario government health agency after the firm missed three years of deadlines and failed to deliver the province’s flagship online medical registry.”

For someone who is about jobs, jobs, jobs for Americans, I just don’t get it. Why didn’t the President just go to Microsoft or Apple? Why didn’t he call up Bill Gates or Steve Jobs (before he died, of course) and ask them for advice, i.e., give me the names of the best and the brightest in the IT biz. I want them to build what I believe will be the most important website in American history.

That’s what I would have done.

Seriously, man, what the fuck?

Now I hate working for a micro-manager. You know the type – he or she has got his or her nose in your face every second of every hour of the workday, and just won’t leave you alone to get your job done.

But the President of the United States has to be, in so many ways, a micro-manager. A hands-on guy. He – or she? Go, Hillary! – has to know what’s going on, has to have his – or her. Go, Hillary! – nose in your face every second of every hour of the workday. The President always has to be one step – or a hundred yards, or a million-zillion miles – in front of the crowd.

Because ultimately, as that plaque on Harry Truman’s desk read – The buck stops here.

And it doesn’t do any good to admit to that after the fact, as Obama did last Wednesday.

Oracle, we need you.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

John Ostrander: The Chicago Pizza Way

ostrander-art-131117-150x101-7084733Ordinarily, I’m a big fan of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. However, on last Wednesday’s night show, he took almost the whole second segment to castigate deep dish pizza, also known as Chicago-style pizza or just Chicago pizza. The whole flippin’ middle segment.

I’m from Chicago.

I love Chicago pizza.

I’d like to refer Mr. Stewart to Sean Connery’s speech in the Untouchables where he talks about “the Chicago Way.”

I think it’s time to get all Rahm Emanuel on your ass, Mr. Stewart.

The main component of New York pizza is grease. There is more grease on a single slice of New York pizza than a school of teen-agers with severe acne who have just eaten New York pizza. New Yorkers act as if grease was one of the basic food groups. There is enough grease in a NY pizza to fuel Willie Nelson’s biodiesel tour bus twice around the country. There is so much grease on a slice of New York pizza that it will pass through your intestine without stopping. In Chicago, if you poop your pants it’s referred to it as laying a NY pizza.

BOOM!

The proper way to eat a slice of NY pizza is to fold it in half lengthwise. That way you don’t have to look at it. It’s also the only way to keep the cheese and sauce or whatever else they want to throw on it from sliding right off the slice onto your shoes. Hold it folded in one hand and hold your nose with the other and slide it into your mouth. Ah, that’s a good New York pizza!

BOOM!

Every place that sells pizza in New York City has to be named Ray’s – Original Ray’s, Famous Ray’s, Original Famous Ray’s. Famous Original Ray’s. Spam Spam Original Ray Ray’s and Spam, and on and on. It doesn’t make a bit of difference – they all taste the same.

You can make NY pizza at home. It’s easy. Get an unsalted cracker, squirt some ketchup on it, add some toe cheese, warm it under your armpit, and there ya go.

BOOM!

Chicago pizza you sit and eat and it’s a meal. One pizza can feed a family. It’s food. NY pizza is a lubricant.

and

Not content with defaming Chicago pizza, Stewart then went after Chicago hot dogs. Seriously? Those Anthony Weiners they serve from a sidewalk vendor’s cart? First, they dredge the East River, then put the dogs in that for three days, and then add a lukewarm stale bun, something yellow that’s vaguely like mustard, and a healthy dose of salmonella. The only place you should eat hot dogs in NYC is at Nathan’s and then only at the original stand at Coney Island and even that doesn’t quite stand up to a Chicago dog and you know why? Vienna Hot Dogs. The best places in Chicago use Vienna Hot Dogs with natural casings. Nothing else even begins to compare. Certainly not a NY alleged hot dog,

One area I think we can both agree. California so-called pizza is an abomination. Pineapple on a pizza? Really? No red sauce of any kind? Why even bother? So. how about a truce, Jon Stewart? I’ll hold down a California pizza lover and you can kick ‘em.

BOOM!

MONDAY MORNING: Mindy Newell

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

 

Mindy Newell: Go West, Young Man

Newell Art 131104“Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country”

Horace Greely

Editor, New York Tribune

July 13, 1865 Editorial

The New York Tribune, established in 1841, was the most progressive and influential newspaper of its day. Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the paper, was a notable social reformer and political activist and through his leadership, the Tribune advocated for abolition, the legal protection of unions, protectionism (known today as anti-globalization or anti-free trade), and against nativism, the political position of demanding a favored status for certain established inhabitants of a nation as compared to claims of newcomers or immigrants. (In modern America Greely would be considered a leftist liberal Democrat, though in the antebellum, Civil War, and eras those beliefs belonged to the Republican nee Whig Party.)

Today a statue of Greeley sits at 33rd Street and Broadway in Greely Square, directly across the street and south of Herald Square, home to Macy’s and the end point of the Thanksgiving Day parade where the Rockettes do their famous line kick dance every fourth Thursday of November.

I know that statue well, for Greely Square is also across the street (and above) from the 33rd PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) terminus. And the PATH train was the way I commuted into New York City whenever I needed be at DC Comics, back when the company “lived” at 666 Fifth Avenue.

Last week – Tuesday, Tuesday, October 22, to be exact – Diane Nelson, President of DC Entertainment, sent a memo to DC employees. You might have seen it already, but here it is:

Dear DCE Team,

As I hope you know, I and the entire DCE exec team work hard to offer transparency about as much of our business plans and results as we possibly and responsibly can. In an effort to continue to do that where possible and to ensure you are hearing news from us, rather than a third party, I am proactively reaching out to you this afternoon to share news about our business.

I can confirm that plans are in the works to centralize DCE’s operations in 2015. Next week, the Exec Team will be in New York for a series of meetings to walk everyone through the plans to relocate the New York operations to Burbank. The move is not imminent and we will have more than a year to work with the entire company on a smooth transition for all of us, personally and professionally.

Everyone on the New York staff will be offered an opportunity to join their Burbank colleagues and those details will be shared with you individually, comprehensively and thoughtfully next week. Meeting notifications will be sent tomorrow to ensure the roll out* of this information and how it affects the company and you personally.

We know this will be a big change for people and we will work diligently to make this as smooth and seamless a transition as possible.

Best,

Diane

My first reaction when I saw it was “Oh, maaaaaan.” My second reaction was “knew it was going to happen.”

My third reaction was sadness, and, surprisingly, since it’s been thirty (!) years since I first stepped onto the PATH train in Jersey City (New Jersey) and took it to 33rd Street and Greely Square to walk up the Avenue of the Americas and west on 53rd Street to 666 Fifth Avenue and the offices of DC Comics, a feeling of dislocation. I felt cast adrift, even though 99% of my friends and co-workers no longer work at DC, and, in fact, the office itself has long since moved to 1700 Broadway, across from the Ed Sullivan Theatre, home of the David Letterman Show.

Many people on various websites have commented on the move. The news media picked it up, including a rather stupid, no, correct that, very stupid piece on WPIX Channel 11 (CW-NYC) while on break at work on Wednesday. I suppose the segment producers thought they were being clever, because they tied the news into some guy who wants to start a “superhero” school in the city, although actually it looked more like self-defense classes for kids. As far as the DC thing, they showed animated Superman and Batman, etc. on the screen, and then the reporter signed off and “flew off.”

But no one thought of the history behind the thousands of four-color pages produced by DC. No one thought of interviewing Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel that chronicles the rise of the comics industry in New York City though thinly veiled characters based on Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and dozens of other early comics professionals. No one thought to interview those writers and artists who made their name at DC.

And no one thought of the history behind the hundreds of thousands of four-color adventures that started out as a way for those writers and artists to earn a living during the Depression and became the mythology of the 20th century, a doorway into imagination for generations, for hundreds of thousands of dreamers who grew up to become artists and writers and police officers and f, refighters and astronauts and astrophysicists because of those four-color pages, those adventures of Superman and Batman and the Flash and Wonder Woman and Green Lantern and the Martian Manhunter and so many, many more, inspired them.

Yes, Marvel Comics is still here. (But for how long?) Yes, many of those who created those adventures never lived in New York City or its surroundings, originally mailing in their work, then faxing in it, then e-mailing their pages over the internet. Yes, Marvel Comics is still here. (But for how long?) And, yes, New York City will always be the city of dreams for the millions who come here to start or restart their lives.

But the citizens of the great metropolis will never again look up in the sky and cry, “Look! Is it a bird? Is it a plane?”

No, it was DC Comics, home to the supermen and superwomen who lived here, if only in the imaginations of those who loved them.

*By the way, Diane, there’s a typo in the memo. It’s “rollout,” not “roll out.”)

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

DC To Leave NYC

DC To Leave NYC

  • News
  • October 29, 2013

DC Enterprises honcho Diane Nelson released the following message to her New York City staff:

Dear DCE Team,

As I hope you know, I and the entire DCE exec team work hard to offer transparency about as much of our business plans and results as we possibly and responsibly can. In an effort to continue to do that where possible and to ensure you are hearing news from us, rather than a third party, I am proactively reaching out to you this afternoon to share news about our business.

I can confirm that plans are in the works to centralize DCE’s operations in 2015. Next week, the Exec Team will be in New York for a series of meetings to walk everyone through the plans to relocate the New York operations to Burbank. The move is not imminent and we will have more than a year to work with the entire company on a smooth transition for all of us, personally and professionally.

Everyone on the New York staff will be offered an opportunity to join their Burbank colleagues and those details will be shared with you individually, comprehensively and thoughtfully next week. Meeting notifications will be sent tomorrow to ensure the roll out of this information and how it affects the company and you personally.

We know this will be a big change for people and we will work diligently to make this as smooth and seamless a transition as possible.

Best,

Diane

So if you’re looking for convenient  parking the next time you go to The Ed Sullivan Theater, pretty soon it’ll get easier.

Michael Davis: New York, New York. It’s a Hell Of A Con.

davis-art-131015-150x121-5188201I had every intention of attending the New York Comic Con. My plans were made months ago. I was looking forward to seeing friends and family; I am a New Yorker after all.

I’ve avoided the New York con over the last few years for a number of reasons, chief among them is they seem to have forgotten all the help I gave them some years ago when they were not as big as they are now.

I hate that shit.

I hate when people want something from you they treat you a certain way but when they don’t (think) they need you any more they treat you like they don’t know you.

Another reason I have avoided the NYC Con is the Javits Center where the event is held. The Javits staff has no respect for comics, geeks or those they consider crazy ass people in costume.

The last time I was there a few years ago (admittedly this may have changed) if you left the convention center and wanted to return you had to go to the back of the line of people who had yet to get in.

So if you waited 45 minutes to get in you would have had to wait on the very same line as if you had not already gained admission, paid your money, got your pass and considered yourself safe from the New York City cold ass weather.

No, you geeky nerd, get to the back of the line. The fans are not the priority at the NYC Con-not by a long shot at least they were not the last time I was there.

Like I said, that may have all changed and if it did-I could give a shit.

If the people at the NYC Con think I give a fuck about representing them in the best light they have another thing coming. The moment someone from the con picks up the phone and apologizes for treating me like shit after I hooked them up then I will more than happy to consider what my loud ass voice says about them.

Anywho, like I was saying I had every intention of going to the NYC Con. In fact I was to be part of a big announcement there. That announcement and seeing my friends and family were more than enough reason for me to brave the Javits Center and if not to forgive at least forget (for the moment) how the NYC Con has treated me.

As luck would have it the announcement was postponed and because it was raining it started to pour and I had to deal with a family issue. So the agonizing decision was made to skip the NYC show.

That unbearable choice was made in about 30 seconds. OK, it was made in about one second, if you don’t count the 29 seconds it took me wipe the silly grin off my face.

Yes, truth be told I still could have made it on Saturday. But since the con is over on Sunday that would have been not a lot of time so what’s the point?

But…

If the same scenario but instead of the NYC Con the venue was Dragon Con or the San Diego Comic Con International (you know, the real Comic Con) I most likely would have been in Atlanta or San Diego on that Saturday in a heartbeat.

Or maybe not.

I’ll tell you this. It would really have bothered me not to make either of those conventions even if it was only for one day. That’s what the NYC Con has yet to learn. How to get people to want to go not because it’s a comic book convention but because it’s the NYC Comic Book Convention.

Once they learn that, I’m in. Hell, if someone I know can tell me they have learned that or that they are treating fans better I’m in. It’s all about respect and it seems like they don’t have any.

Soooo until then I’ll just keep pointing stuff out like how fans and professionals alike were pissed when they found out the NYC Con hijacked Twitter accounts to post excited tweets about the convention – it included links to its official Facebook page.

All done without anyone’s permission.

Like I said. It’s about respect.

WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold

THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil

 

Marc Alan Fishman: New York, New York

fishman-art-131012-150x116-6493724After a quick li’l jaunt across the lovely Midwest, Unshaven Comics has arrived in fabulous New York City. Well, technically, we’re in New Jersey. Is it as fabulous? Time will tell. At very least, our swell hosts have shown us nothing but the finest hospitality. Is it New Jersey tradition to spit in your guests faces and declare “Welcome to Jersey, fuck face!”?

So why the long trip? Well, we’re about to embark on the second largest convention in North America. The New York Comic Con boasts an audience five times the size of the largest con we’ve attended to date. While we’ve been conning for over five years now, NYCC will perhaps show us what an audience of serious mass will look like. Our game plan isn’t any different; we stand, we pitch, we smile, we sell. And we’ll be doing it alongside our ComicMix cohorts. Suffice to say, we’re excited.

New York is not just a city. It’s the city. Marvel has built its entire comic continuity around the damned city. Except the West Coast Avengers, and well, who cares about them? They don’t even care about themselves. And why not?

What I saw on our trip, in-between bouts of getting lost on one of the 7,986 turnpikes in the area, is beautiful. The NYC skyline is a thing of beauty. It’s no Chicago mind you, but hey… this is the concrete jungle where dreams are made of. So says Jay Z. Chicago only has R. Kelly and Kanye, and well, I’ll take Hova over them any day. But I digress. (note: I’m taking complete credit for ComicMixers coining this phrase. I stole it from my choir director in high school, and in turn they stole it from me. Nyah nyah boo boo.)

New York’s Comic Con is run by Reed, the same company who brought us (Unshaven that is) to C2E2. That convention, held in downtown Chicago, has been the toast of the town for three years running. While we’ve seen more production on our sales goals at Wizard World, to be frank, C2E2 gives us both decent sales and amazing exposure. Whilst here in the city that never sleeps (which makes sense, since the drivers are far more cranky than we friendly and amazing Chicagoans), we expect to see the best of both worlds. With expected attendance that dwarves R2D2, and a guest list that reads more like the old Wizard Top Ten lists of yesteryear, Unshaven Comics is getting access to the best fans we could ask for; people there to meet their favorite creators, with an open mind to find something new. Given that our east coast exposure has been limited to a pair of Baltimore Comic-Cons, we’re basically brand new to the biggest city in the world. And Unshaven Comics does well with being new.

By the time you read this, we’ll be in the thick of it. A four-day show is a major undertaking. We’ll be behind our table, hurling books left and right. If you’re still in the area, make sure you come out and say hello. Or you know… “Hello, fuck face!”

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

Paradox Alice Being Released Digitally October 15

629019-paradox_aliceNew York City, NY – Tuesday, October 1st — The Orchard, in association with Mako Pictures and Fabrication Films are pleased to announce the release of PARADOX ALICE, one of this year’s most highly anticipated independent science fiction films. A cornerstone in the new paradigm of lost-in-space sci-fi movies like Clooney and Bullock’s Gravity, PARADOX ALICE sets off from Europa in an epic outer space odyssey.  The adventure takes place in 2040 and stars Amy Lindsay (Star Trek: Voyager), Jeneta St. Clair (The Appearing), Ethan Sharrett (Homecoming), and Stewart W. Calhoun (The Eves).

A group of astronauts have been sent on a dangerous mission to retrieve water from Europa, one of the several moons orbiting the planet Jupiter. After narrowly escaping the moon to head back home, the team discovers that a nuclear war has left earth uninhabitable. While the remaining male astronauts come to grips over their losses, one of the crew members spontaneously transforms into a woman (in a scene that is as shocking as 1979’s ALIEN). Each character tries to uncover the mystery of this horrific event. Was it an act of God, or a biological reaction for keeping the human race alive? As the men vie for the last female in existence, they begin to turn on one another. All of the questions come to a head in a shocking finale.

The Orchard will be releasing PARADOX ALICE for sale and for rental in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand across all major online video services including iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, X-box, Playstation, and Vudu as well as through Cable VOD on October 15, 2013 with a DVD release to follow.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id3hsJ7F7so[/youtube]

DENNIS O’NEIL: The Slings of Arrow

O'Neil Art 131003Sauntering through Digitalville, sipping news and trivia like a hummingbird sipping nectar from a flower, looking for nothing in particular, except maybe an idea for something to write about. Anything in the comic book line?

Ah. Here’s a news item (if you can call this kind of stuff “news”) informing us that in the coming season of The CW’s Arrow, there will be more superpowers, including a three-episode arc featuring The Flash, who is certainly one of DC Comics’ mightier superguys – not as powerful as big daddy Superman, but way above, say, The Atom. And there will also be more costumed characters. Will these be equal to The Flash, or closer to the series’ title character, whom I’ve always considered a human-scaled guy, as opposed to a demigod? (And if you want to lose the “demi” how can I stop you?) Or maybe they’ll up Green Arrow’s power quotient – have him stand near a chemical explosion, maybe, and then…I don’t know – use his bow to shatter Jupiter?

And yeah, yeah, I know I referred to the character as Green Arrow instead of the name the video folk prefer, just plain “Arrow.” Well, hey, I knew him when.

I guess I’ll be parking myself in front of the screen on Wednesday nights at eight and watch the questions asked above get answered over the next several months. I may not like the answers, but if I did, the storytellers might not be doing their jobs, which involve engaging a certain demographic, My children are just barely young enough to be part of said demographic. I am way north of it. I am not (Green) Arrow’s audience and so my preferences and quibbles are relevant only to me, and maybe long-suffering Marifran, who has to listen to me express them.

The Arrow story was what I found in Digitalville this morning. This afternoon, it got ugly. Another comic book-related story, the kind we’d rather not see.

It apparently originated at New York City’s CBS outlet, and reported a comic book artist’s loss of 30 years’ work. The artist is my old colleague, Neal Adams. Though I’m not clear on details, it seems that Neal lost the art in a taxicab. I can’t begin to estimate the financial loss Neal has incurred, and bad as that is, the psychological loss might be greater. All those hours of thought and effort and inspiration, hunched over a drawing board, and the sense of achievement and satisfaction manifest in the work…

There is hope. The loss is recent and in the video clip that communicated the story Neal hopes that his portfolios will be returned. So do I.

There is a reward. Somebody claim it, please.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON: The Tweeks!

FRIDAY MORNING: Martha Thomases

 

 

Mindy Newell: Multiverse University

Quantum Leap Special Edition #1As I was saying…

One of the most imaginative uses of time travel as a story platform was Don Bellasario’s Quantum Leap, which starred Scott Bakula as quantum physicist (among other things) Dr. Sam Beckett and Dean Stockwell as Rear Admiral Al Calavicci:

“Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished…

“He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.”

Sam was changing history.

Or was he creating alternate histories?

Alternate histories that led to whole new universes.

Parallel universes.

Multiverses within the meta-universe.

The multiverse  (a term coined by American philosopher and psychologist William James in 1895—I wonder what he was smoking?) is a hypothesis that states that there are infinite numbers of universes existing parallel to our own, but at different “levels” within the meta-universe.  The meta-universe is the hypothetical set of infinite—or maybe finite—possible universes (including our own) that together comprises everything that exists, i.e., you, me, the iMac computer I’m typing this on, the New York City skyline outside my window, President Obama, Vladimir Putin, Syria, the sun, the moon, the planets, the stars, space, time, matter, and energy, and the physical laws and mathematical constants that define them.  (In other words, 1 + 1 = 2 no matter where you are in the meta-universe.)

Confused?  See if this helps.  Think of the meta-universe as a sort of giant department store.  The store is stocked with merchandise, but each floor is a separate department, and a little different; they are contained within the same number of square feet, but the first floor sells cosmetics and leather goods and men’s wear, the second is dedicated to children, the third to women, and so on.  But each floor, while having its own standards and imperatives, must obey the rules set by the larger store within which it exists.

So, if Sam Beckett was creating alternate histories as he “quantum leaped” through time, did he eradicate himself from any or all histories?  In the last episode, Sam rights what he believes is his greatest wrong—not telling Beth (Al’s first wife and true love, whom he met in a previous jump) that Al isn’t dead, that he is a POW in Vietnam:

Sam:  I’m going to tell you a story. A
 story with a happy ending, but
only if you believe me.

Beth:  And if I don’t?

Sam:  You will. I swear you will. Instead of ‘Once upon a time,’ let’s start with the happy ending.
 Al’s alive and coming home.

The screen goes black.  A caption tells us that Al and Beth will be celebrating their 49th anniversary this year.

And another caption tells us, “Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home.”

But what does that mean?

The Grandfather Paradox:  Some fans believe that by changing the course of Beth and Al’s life, Sam wiped himself out of existence because Al Calavicci and Sam never met, therefore Al never became a key element in the development of the Quantum Leap project and so it never got off the ground.  But if Sam never existed, then how could he leap to Beth and tell her to wait, for Al was coming home?

The Novikov Self-Consistency Principle:  Other fans say that, so what if Al is happily married to Beth?  Sam still developed his quantum leap theory, and Al still became his liaison with the government and Sam is still out there, fighting “to put right what once went wrong.”  History rights itself.  History is consistent.

The Multiverse Theory:  Quantum mechanics—Sam is a quantum physicist—describes existence as probabilities, not definite outcomes.  And the mathematics of quantum theory suggests that all the possible outcomes of a situation do actually occur.  Robert Frost described it this way in The Road Not Taken:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

By taking the “one less traveled by,” the narrator has led a life with a certain outcome.  However, in quantum mechanics, the narrator also took the other road, the one “more” traveled by, and so a “bubble” or “daughter” universe was created, one in which the events and outcome of the narrators life were just as true, but just as different.

American theoretical physicist and string theorist Brian Green, now a professor at Columbia University, put it this way in his 2011 book The Hidden Reality:  Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos.

“And in each universe, there’s a copy of you witnessing one or the other outcome, thinking — incorrectly — that your reality is the only reality.”

So in this universe I have a daughter named Alix who is married to Jeff and they’re about to have a baby any minute, and I work as a nurse in the operating room and write for ComicMix.

In another universe I stayed married to Alix’s father, only in that universe Alixandra is Alexander and I never became a comics writer so I’m not writing this column for ComixMix because I never met Mike Gold who talked me into this thing in the first place.

In another universe, everything happened just like it has happened, only I never got better from my clinical depression and when I’m not in the hospital I’m on Welfare and Medicaid and my daughter doesn’t talk to me.

And in another universe, my father doesn’t have Complex Partial Seizure syndrome and he is going strong at 90 and my mother doesn’t need a walker and doesn’t have emotional, crazy outbursts and she’s as healthy as a horse and my Aunt Augie never had cancer and died and she and my mother talk every day on the phone….

In another universe I don’t have black hair (yeah, I dye it) but let myself go gray and I never married at all but Alixandra is still my daughter and Jeff is still her husband and they live on the East Coast and I’m a film editor who lives in Laurel Canyon with a couple of Oscars and SAG Awards under my belt.

What dreams may be in the multiverse….

To be continued next week!

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WILD MARJORAM EPULP ARRIVES!

  • News
  • August 25, 2013
N.R. Grabe has released a new e-pulp called Wild Marjoram. Wild Marjoram is set in glorious Chicagoland in a world where The Great War has never ended and a mechanic gets caught in the underground world of crime, odd inventions and the mystery of the Slates.

The Vote is a tale of Marjoram and Jerry as they cruise into the lion’s den in The Broken Apple, what New York City is know called. But this journey turns into chaos for the couple, as they find themselves in the backroads of occupied America.

Learn more about Wild Marjoram here and here.

PRESS RELEASE:

This leading lady, doesn’t look for trouble, but she sure seems finds it…

Wild Marjoram is a blonde haired blue-eyed mechanic with a locket that holds the key to her past. This perfect Aryan specimen lives in hiding from the Nazi occupation of the United States of the 1930s. If they discovered her, she’ll be condemned to the fate of a broodmare. But she’s not the type of girl to give up without a fight.

In “Wild Marjoram: The Vote”, Marj and Jerry go on a road trip to hookup with members of the underground resistance. All seems fine until the rug is pulled out from under our heroes in a bait and switch move where allies turn enemies. The free spirited city girl becomes the prisoner of a country folk tribunal looking to punish an outsider’s sins. Majority rules in their life or death vote!

Wild Marjoram’s explosive recipe appeared in the dreams of N.R. Grabe. Its pulp lineage arrives from the likes of “Astounding Stories”, “Gangster Stories” and speculative-fiction descendants like “The Handmaids Tale“. N.R. has baked her if-it-had-happened-otherwise story with action, intrigue and a cavalcade of colorful characters. We hope you enjoy each bite.

Now, throw away your school books because this Alternate History is uncharted. Keep your eyes open and your head down. You’d better pack an extra drum for your Tommy gun, just in case…

“Wild Marjoram: The Vote” is currently available at your favorite eBookstores.
Download your free preview today!

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