Listening to people go about their daily lives in a performance setting. What makes people think that when their was a ticket price to pay to be allowed access to a performance that it is okay to chit chat like they are sitting at home on their couch? Nobody wants to listen to running commentary during a movie or general shooting of the bull during a lecture or other performance. People seem to have a very hard time simply being quiet, sitting down, and being entertained or informed. The more quiet an environment becomes, or is expected to become, the more people become loud and figidity. Inevitably, when the lights dim, there is a final push of noise and talk and chatter. It’s as if people must release one last burst of mindless crap before trying to not be annoying to others.

Food. I bet if someone goes on a date with someone they rarely chew with their mouths wide open. Why is then that when someone comes to a movie theatre they decide it’s time to chew and slurp and smack with their pie holes absolutely gaping? Not enough, let’s add some yummy and mmmm sounds to top things off nicely. Watching the Avengers sounds like feeding time at a petting zoo. People….clothes your mouths and chew like someone taught you manners at some point in your life. Oh yeah, you probably never had that experience. Part two of the eating in a movie issue. Wrappers. Crinkle, crunch, tear, fold, bend, and pop. Just open the goddamn thing once and for all and get on with things!

Childcare. Parents, guardians, siblings, Mary freaking Poppins, you have the responsibility for keeping loud children quiet. You must use the theatre going experience as an opportunity to teach basic lessons. What lessons? Nobody wants to hear the children during the movie, nobody wants to hear you discipline or apply life lessons out loud during the movie, nobody wants to hear constant bursts of “sssshhhhh” and “be quiet” during the movie or performance. If a small human or humans is being loud, talkative, and disruptive, remove their human forms from the performance or viewing area immediately. Nobody else should have to listen to the fallout for you not being able to get a sitter. If you have loud offspring under your control and you know they will be loud during a performance, don’t show up! Yes, you paid the same $9 I did to see the same movie, that does give you the right to disrupt 100 other people who paid the same $9. Well mannered kids are always welcome. When they know that it’s time to be quiet during a movie or performance just adds to their general low level of charm.

While the rant is in progress, it’s time to bring up a few other areas of etiquette. If you walk into a movie theatre and there are only three people in the seats, DO NOT decide to sit right in front of these three people. I’m not talking in front of in a general sense, I’m talking right in front seat for seat. Who does this? We are not geese and we do not need to work in flocks. Move down a few rows so I don’t have to constantly see your cell phone screen and try to see over the giant cranium of Big Daddy Jeremy. Think about others just a little bit once in a while.

You should not need to be told by the reminder on the movie screen to turn off or put your cell phone on silent. Seeing this reminder should not result in a chorus of “oh my, I forgot”, “where’s that silly off button”, “Jeremy, how do I turn off my phone”, “I’ll just leave it on, they can’t tell me what to do with my phone”…..ugh…..turn that fucker off or put it on silent. Do it before Mr. Popcorn reminds you to do so. It’s not that difficult.

If you appear at a classical music concert of any kind, the kind where there are string instruments, DO NOT say with authority “well that’s a funny looking fiddle.” Okay. It’s not a fiddle Cotter it’s a violin, viola, cello, or bass. If you are listening to bluegrass or country, yes and sure, it’s definitely a fiddle. If the performers are wearing black socks, it’s not a freaking fiddle! On the same line of things, if you are at the same kind of concert, do not state emphatically that “this shur don’t sound like Alan Jackson”….you are correct. It doesn’t sound like Alan Jackson. Why? Because it’s Mozart for fuck’s sake! Please make an attempt not to sound like a giant moron on purpose. Save that sort of thing for when you are sitting on your own couch.

All that is great and wonderful about Broadway is celebrated at the Tony Awards. Whether you are a fan of plays or musicals, it is all in the spotlight (again) during the best awards show to ever be seen on planet earth.

There is something for everybody when a piece of art is produced on the stage. Singing, dancing, lighting, costumes, scenery, acting, and storytelling. Show me somebody who can’t find something to like about plays or musicals and you have a very boring and narrow-minded person on your hands.

Think about it, why are some of the most popular and longest running shows in history so popular? It is those individuals that were reluctant to attend a performance in the first place who finally quit whining, attend a performance, and find that as they leave they have a song running through their head or a story they can’t get away from at any cost.  What do they do then? They go back to see the show a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time. Broadway grabs the reluctant and brings them back full of smiles and happy thoughts.

Their is a heightened sense of anticipation prior to seeing a broadway show live. You might be familiar with the storyline or have had read the book that a show is based on. A snappy tune from a show may be one of your most favorite songs. Your kids are excited about seeing something and therefore you are excited by default. Anticipation as the auditorium fills with people and the tension builds as curtain time inches ever closer. The lights dim, people finally start to shut the hell up with the jibber jabber, and then BOOM…showtime…the music erupts, the lights come on, and you are immediately transported to a different time and place, suspending belief in the everyday and the normal boring goings on of daily life.

Now, you may think a description like this is just a bunch of bright eyed  fantastical theatre club crap. Well, let’s have an example. Phantom of the Opera opens with a simple auction. Items from the opera house in Paris are being auctioned off simply and quietly. Lot 664, lot 665, until we get to lot 666. It appears this item has a bit more of a backstory than the previous items. It played a part in a problematic time at the opera house. The auctioneer then says this line, “‘Perhaps we can scare away the ghost of so many years ago with a little illumination, gentleman!” At this point the orchestra erupts into the Overture, a giant crystal chandelier swings down from above and moves over the audience, lower and lower until it arrives at the stage.  Come on!  This is some exciting stuff accompanied by well known and exciting music. If you don’t get even a small thrill from this you are just aren’t freaking paying attention.

Other examples beg to just leap off the page. Getting slapped in the face with the hard punk sounds of “American Idiot”, the beautiful get androgynously creepy opening song “Wilkommen” in Cabaret, the immediate hilarity in “Book of Mormon.” Don’t like musicals? How about the stark immediate reality of “Death of a Salesman”, the tension that doesn’t build up but just starts out at a high level in “Deathtrap.”

You don’t have to know all the songs in “Annie” like the writer of this blog to have an appreciation. You don’t have to have a fascination with Alan Cumming that borders on the obsessive do enjoy a foot tapping show, and you don’t have to be “odd” or “weird” or (gasp!) gay to enjoy the offerings of a Broadway show.

If you feel brave, you want to expand your horizons, and you’ve decided it’s time to work on your jazz hands, watch the Tony Awards tonight. I absolutely guarantee that even Republicans will find something that catches their eye.

You tell somebody what you are interested in and they will often say something like “why? It’s so childish.” This is often heard when your interests are in the area of fantasy, gaming, science fiction, comic book movie adaptations, and speculative fiction. Just to name a few areas. People hear about these things and they automatically relate them to childhood and to things that are no longer in their lives. They have been overrun with societal expectations and have somewhere along their path have been pushed towards being conventional and overly responsible. This is something that should not happen without a fight.

Why is there a fear of childish things? Is it really a fear or is it merely a lack of understanding? While listening to people who have questioned someone’s interests and passions a clear pattern has emerged. They have a basic lack of understanding about these topics and a lack of understanding often leads to blatant disregard. The things they are minimizing and questioning are the very things that they loved as children. Comic books, cartoon characters, childhood movies such as Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Princess Bride, and Back to the Future. They have faint memories of loving these things and almost no memory of when they let these things fall by the wayside and “grew up.”

A working hypothesis of why this happens looks something like this…. these people struggle with these topics because they are difficult to understand. The Marvel Universe and how it is tied in together with various characters, plot lines, and back-stories is difficult to understand. It makes a person think and it makes them wonder. Speculative fiction demands that you are able to suspend current views and look forward to things that do not actually yet exist. It demands a head in the clouds approach to the world while at the same time demanding a basic understanding of science, technology, and mathematics. The basic rules of Dungeons and Dragons are 104 pages long. This is the instruction manual to just get started in the game. Read these game rules…I dare you.

Those that see these things as “childish” often think of them as firmly grounded in the real world. They are all about having a job and making a good living. They pride themselves on being practical and want to minimize the nonsense in their lives. Fine. Let us talk a bit about simple economics. The video game industry employs. Let us give these practical people the benefit of the doubt and look at numbers from 2009. The Game Developer Census by Game Developer Research showed that 44,806 people were employed in the industry in 2009. This is just in the United States. In the last six years, these numbers of gone up and up. People employed in well paying positions. Practical at the very core. Let us move on to movies and look at the earnings of Marvel movies. These are movies based on “childish” comic book heroes. According to Box Office Mojo, Marvel movies have earned $7,031,799,883. That is billion. That is serious NERD money. This kind of success gives an entire new meaning to “Revenge of the Nerds.”

I feel sorry for those people who cannot find any joy in things from childhood. It is sad that they simply do not want to look at the amount of fun information that is out in the world. They want to feel safe in their structures lives that offer very little in the way of fantasy (Fifty Shades of Grey does not count) and do not want to look beyond the world of work, Wal-Mart, and the occasional exciting trip to the next town over.

Renewed interests as an adult are directly related to toys lost as a child.  Treasured items that you could not imagine parting with have somehow been lost completely.  Weathered and battered, these toys did not disappear without first having been used and over and over again.

A green vinyl hard sided suitcase.  The inner pockets ripped out to better accommodate the King of all toys.  LEGOS.  Mounds of legos of all shapes, sizes, and colors.  Platforms for buildings, wheels, body parts, beautiful squares and rectangles all coming together to be whatever is wanted.  Thousands of individual pieces played with over the years and added to as needs presented themselves.  These LEGOS were clearly mobile and were taken everywhere as a whole and in smaller individual groups.  Kindergarten until 4th grade, not a day passed when LEGOS were not on board and readily available.  In pockets, in pencil boxes, traded with friends, and always ready for the imagination.  This epic pile of plastic magic somehow just disappeared.  One day they were ever present and the next they had vanished into thin air.  Asking the question of how this happens is not worth the effort.  Somewhere out there these plastic beauties still live on and are hopefully part of someone’s grand project.

Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars.  No one brand was better than the next.  They each offered something different and had enough accessories available that made it necessary to not choose sides.  The number still sticks in my head.  From an age when I did not know what a car was until and age when I should have moved on, 229 individual die-cast cars and trucks were accumulated, played with, organized, and cared for at all costs.  Plastic sided cases with individual slots for cars were stacked 4 deep.  Race tracks with 360 degree loops were put together, taken apart, and put together again for epic battles between cars.  The front porch of the house where I grew up was the scene of some of the most involved and thought out play involving these cars.  My best buddy Ricky Heidorn and I were simply obsessed with these small toys.  We would line then up, park them, choose different cars for different purposes, roll them, crash them, and then park them once again.  Like the LEGOS they one day simply vanished.  Related?  I don’t know.  Tragic and sad?  Of course.

Science toys.  Microscopes, chemistry sets, erector sets, mini labs, electronics kits, and physics based toys.  All taken out and setup at once to create a mad scientist laboratory in the garage.  A table neatly arranged from left to right according to the interest of the day.  Notebooks, pencils, calculators available as useful tools and really cool props.  Being the son of a Doctor, I had easy access to a white lab coat.  Beyond fun and world where a kid could use his imagination to explore endless possibilities.  Yep, all of this, including the lab coat (personalized with a marker)….gone gone gone.

Imagine finding all of these things all at once at the same time.  The thought of this is almost too much to stand.  The happiness would be beyond words.

A very recent trip to Paris brought out the inner Geek in a different way. A more refined and cultured Geek appeared with a renewed appreciation for art, architecture, food, wine, and fashion. Of course, traditional Geek destinations such a world famous bookstore were also on the list. This “literary” Geek is the one that is most recently being embraced and a trip to a literary capital of the world was a highlight.

It was amazing to see the emphasis that people in Paris put on their bookstores. Like their food, locals have the opportunity to choose from specialized stores offering specifics items to meet any interest. Rare books, travel books, children’s books, used books, and French literature were the focus of various bookstore’s around the city.

Any trip to Paris must include a prolonged visit to Shakespeare and Company on the left bank. This literary destination is a bucket list item for those that find true love in books. The staff was helpful and polite. A person can quickly tell that they are there because they want to be doing that job. They have the same geeky love of books as the people that stroll through the store. Next door is the rare/antique bookshop with the same name. The shop only allows 5 people inside at a time so as to limit the possibility of anything being damaged and to keep browsing space in this small area at a premium. Beautiful first editions line the shelves one after another. The truly rare books are kept behind locked glass cabinets. Quiet and serene with that oh so wonderful smell of old leather and paper.

Items were purchased and shipped. They have now been received and each book has a stamp from Shakespeare and Company “Kilometer One Paris”…..treasure to enjoy over and over.

The first day of school was always very exciting. New supplies, new clothes, and new clothes. The anticipation of those new classes was really the main thing. Textbooks being handed out, assignments given, quiz dates to be aware of. For any nerd this was where it was at. Bring it on.

There were the kids that dreaded this day and then there were those that had this on the kid calendar for weeks. At some point summer began to be a drag and the list of things to do in a small town quickly dwindled. Especially if you weren’t a huge sports fan, player, or cared even a little. It was soon time to get back to the glorious classroom.

Those of us who had this mindset had one thing in common. We had Trapper Keepers that were organized to the point of obsession. Color coded, cross-referenced, collated, and labeled. By class, by time, and with separate folders for homework, study materials, and schedules.

As soon as one class starts the anticipation for the next would begin. The one thing that would get in the way of this fantastic timeline was the dreaded PE. Ugh. You are telling me that I have to stop what I’m doing, change clothes, and sit on a nasty gym floor and listen to some guy wearing far too tight polyester shorts rattle on about the ins and out of hustling and keeping it moving? BORING. Thankfully it would soon be over and those cool kids in the group could get to science class.

To this day, the thought of the first day of school is still a fantastic memory. I just wish I could have my own first day of school once again.

Guardians of the Galaxy is simply pure fun. Serious intergalactic fun.

The opening scene was getting to be a bit maudalin but it was important as it provided the foundation for the story. At the end of this opening you know this is going to be a different sort of movie.

Music plays an important role and it does done effectively on two levels. First, the background music is orchestral in nature and provides consistent mood elements that keep you engaged but not distracted. At the forefront, the music that emanates from the vintage WALKMAN adds a quirky and unexpected sound dialogue to the ongoing story. This vintage 80’s music becomes a character in and of itself.

For science fiction fans, this movie offers everything you would ever want. It offers a touch of the nostalgic and campy as well as the ultra-modern aspect of incredible visual effects combined with 3D technology. Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon meets Avatar. Visually, this film will take your breath away and the 3D aspect will bring you in and make you feel as if you are one of the Guardians. Engaging at the highest level.

If you have seen more than three science fiction or action movies you would think that the “save the world/universe” plot line would get old. Under the more than capable and I’d say borderline brilliant hands of the writers, this typical plot line is provided with new twists, new elements, and new dimensions that make it feel as if it is something that you have never seen before. The outcome may be predictable, especially knowing that sequels are already in the works, but as you move through this film you feel as if it is fresh and something that has never been told before.

The character development in this film is not at the forefront. It does not need to be at the forefront. Although each character developed, their immediate personalities are so strong and engaging that the watcher really does not character how they grow as people, trees, or raccoons. They are immediately engaging, funny, deep, and show a level of humanity often not seen with real humans. Watching the movie, you will tend to want to have a favorite character. However, with characters as strong as these you may end up having multiple favorites. Each is so different that is hard to single out a favorite.

You do not have to be a fan or follower of the MARVEL universe. A background in previous MARVEL movies, the current TV show, or even a vague familiarity with any MARVEL characters is not necessary to enjoy this film. That is the beauty of this film. It will introduce people to the MARVEL universe. If they are interested, it will ease them into the fantastic world that exists on all levels of MARVEL. This is a world you want to visit.

This film is all about fun, humor, and sci-fi action. Any movie that offers a small daisy growing out of the palm of a talking tree is a winner. It is completely wonderful and recommended at the highest level.

Dad.  Thank you for allowing me to be who I wanted to be.  I was not interested in playing sports, using power tools, shooting animals (or even hold a gun), driving fast cars, or doing other large manly things in a manly way.  I loved LEGOS, classical music, books, opera, museums, spending time alone, playing with numbers, playing Dungeons and Dragons, playing and designing video games, and NOT going to medical school.  There was no pressure to conform and to be a “normal” kid in a small town.  There was no pressure to continue in the family business (6 generations?) of being a medical doctor.  I was encouraged to follow my interests and to pursue my passions.  This may not sound like a big deal, but it is actually huge.  Really huge.  A small public thank you for allowing me to be the eccentric kid in a town that was all about conformity.

Luckily for myself, I was a really good athlete.  During recess I could put down my book, get up, and absolutely DEMOLISH all challengers in any playground game ever invented.  In some way, this made my Dad’s eye twinkle just a little bit.  

It’s May the 4^th, commonly known as “Star Wars Day.” Looking back over the last 37 years since the release of Star Wars (Episode IV), I’ve come to realize just how much the movie taught me. How to overcome odds while still keeping a sense of humor, the importance of friends who share the same vision, not backing down against tyranny, i.e. bullies, recognizing that learning takes time and that wisdom comes from those that are often much older. These lessons are recognized by 7-year-olds as well as 77-year olds. They are adapted to fit each individual reality. On top of the obvious lessons and ancient mythology, the film is just pure fun. Androids, explosions, spaceships, laser gun fights, subtle sly humor and a freaking Wookie!

When you come out as a fan of Star Wars you get one of two responses….complete agreement and excitement or bewilderment and scorn. This is especially true as a 2^nd grader in a small town. I quickly realized how quickly you learn who your true friends are and how quickly you see how mean and hateful people can be towards somebody that thinks differently. To this day, this trend continues. When you are proud of what you believe in and what interests you and in turn you become vocal about these things, you quickly see those people that embrace you and those that show their ugly side based on nothing more than being around someone they perceive as odd or outside of the norm.   Learning how to deal with these people is a great lesson and one that I’m very grateful for having learned at a young age. Those that accept you for your interests and passions are your true friends. Those that laugh, criticize, and simply don’t understand, are best left to their own sad and boring realities.

No matter how people see you as a Star Wars fan, the franchise is just pure joy. It is a separation from reality that intrigues and makes a person think. It represents the acceptance of other cultures and races (alien, human, and robot) and it shows worlds beyond our own that offer the same mysteries and challenges of our present day tiny blue dot. Earth.