Unsolicited Advice

I am completely incapable of finding something interesting without also wanting to know exactly how it works. Not just physical objects like toys, or mechanical processes like figure skating and hooping, but also abstract things like linguistic structures and social scripts. I'm willing to do the kind of obsessive research you need to make this work, so the fact that this is weird normally doesn't bother me much. The most troublesome part is that I keep unintentionally convincing people that I'm the local expert in something I've only been cramming into my head for a few weeks, which can get awkward. At least by that point, I can direct them to other people who know a lot more than I do. I also do it in personal relationships, which has the unfortunate side effect of confusing and annoying other humans. I gather they feel that anyone who wants to scrutinize interaction in that much detail is determined to find fault with whatever's going on. I think it's just ...

The house was always a menagerie while I was growing up. My mother couldn't turn away an animal. Several times, we had neighborhood people ring the doorbell to ask if a kitten wandering around stray was ours. If it wasn't before, it was now. The minimum complement was two cats and two dogs, plus any small caged critters we had lying about, but it ranged much higher than that at times -- one of the cats escaped for the night before we could get her into the spay/neuter clinic, and we briefly had ten of them, before the babies were weaned and re-homed. Have you ever been in a house with ten cats? It's an adventure. My father had to check his size 13 work boots every morning before putting them on, in case a kitten had decided to nap inside. The dogs were generally fewer in number, but made up for it in mass. Right around the time I was born, my parents had a dog named Yeti. It was apt. He was half Lab, half husky, with mismatched eyes, and completely indestructible. He wa...

One of the highlights of any Supernatural convention is, of course, seeing the actors live on stage. They generally do panels, which is con-speak for sitting there with a mic and answering audience questions. In theory, anyway. Some of these people should not be allowed to run a panel by themselves. A show, sure; a panel, no. Sebastian Roché has the attention span of a fruit fly on meth, and without a babysitter will bounce around and produce a stream of early-Robin-Williams-esque comedy monologue. You can remind him that he's supposed to be doing a Q&A, but unless you're standing right next to him the whole time, it'll go in one ear and out the other. (Not having a sitter also deprives Roché of one of his favorite things, which is a friend to cheerfully molest. There's a running joke to the effect that the main difference between Roché and Balthasar, the character he plays, is that Roché already speaks French and wouldn't have to ask how you say ménage à ...

I've been trying to write up notes on Vegascon for days -- less the usual interruptions, and a couple of unusual ones -- and I'm very much afraid it's not going to be what the die-hard fans are hoping for. See, I have what is evidently the magical power to speak to people who are especially charming, attractive, brilliant, famous, etc., without losing my ever-loving mind. It's not a matter of iron willpower. Whatever gene codes for fear of God, expressed in modern-day America as gibbering in the presence of celebrities, I don't have it. I get the gibbering; I've said and done plenty of idiot things when in the throes of one of those horrible involuntary brain-destroying crushes, just like everyone else. It happens when you hold someone in high regard, are emotionally invested in getting their regard in return, and fear that you will somehow do something so profoundly moronic they'll decide it's best to avoid you forever more. The process of trying to...

I should probably start out my con notes by observing that Vegascon was a very, very drunk place. "Salute to Supernatural" is not a single convention; it's a series of bookings strung across North America. I don't know what the demographics are elsewhere, but the people who showed up to the one in Las Vegas were generally the ones old enough to have fun in the rest of Las Vegas. Almost all of them were over 21, and probably half of them were over 25. Not only were they old enough to buy their own overpriced froot-flavored rum drinks, most of them were old enough to know what would happen when they slammed one, and at what point they should maybe quit doing that. There was lots of cheerful uninhibited yelling, but a pleasant lack of people retching in the bushes off the patio. Given the general tone on tumblr, I think I expected a lot more shrieky teenagers. Not that the teenagers are bad. My first trip to Vegas for an event was with Mog and our third roommate at t...

So, tumblr kind of broke my sidekick. Moggie warned a few people that she was going to come home from Vegas with some photos, and that they were required to humor her by nodding and smiling when she showed them off. Then she posted ours to tumblr, and as of now, it's got just under 800 notes. And one of the rebloggers translated her caption into Portuguese. She was past confusion and well into giggling hysterically at the insanity of the internet when I pointed that out. All of the good commentary happens down in the hashtags, Moggie tells me, and in one of them someone's commented on my intro, something like 'haha that's just what misha would want to hear'. Well, yes. That's why I said it. Just because these things are off-the-cuff doesn't mean they're completely random. First and foremost, I wanted Moggie to not implode. I talk to strangers. My main function when we're together in crowds is to flit forth like a twittery, attention-grabbing cana...

Allow me to ramble about airport security for a moment. I'll level with you guys: I don't care about the body scan. I totally understand why other people do, but it doesn't even register with me as an inconvenience. I've looked like this since I was fourteen; I've had a long time to get used to the idea that other people might want to see me naked, and some of them are going to try. I understand that there's no way to stop the really cunning psychopaths, but I don't care how pervy the gate guy is, as long as he's also making a decent effort to make sure I'm not getting on an airplane with some dude who thinks his neighbor's dog told him to board the first Airbus he can find with 37 steak knives and a death wish. More relevantly, I'm also relying on him to make sure some fuckwit doesn't get past with something stupid like a styrofoam cooler full of dry ice that they intend to shove into the overhead bin, whose fumes would provoke widespr...