BattleDuck

A Bit Larger Image Here.

If you are a Necon camper with great prowess in the athletic or mental arenas then you can look forward to winning one or more of this year’s Necon medals! It is a custom design encased in the highest grade crystal clear space age polymer known to man with a pin backing tossed on. Yep, it is a picture in beer cap. Hey, it’s Necon!

For the 30th anniversary, you might be expecting something clunky and large with a ribbon that ought to give you a great case of torticollis. I thought that perhaps a cool pin that you could wear whenever you wanted might be more the ticket.  Just think, beercap bling !!

For those of you who did not manage to win, coughPaulcough, we have created a few extra with a derivation of the winners design. Manuela has gone even a step further and created four little beauties that would make great hat pins.

Anyway, I  guess we will know on Sunday who has been keeping up with their daily sacrifices to the gods!

Well, I have joined a long list of artists that have been ripped off by a weasel named Jim Shipman. My apologies to the true weasels.

Jim Shipman runs an operation called Outlaw Press which heartedly lives up to its name. Apparently for years, he has been stealing IP from witers and artists alike. He has been found out and dropped from Lulu, Ebay and  many others. He is now back on Amazon, again.

A fan sent me a letter pointing out something that he found disturbing. So did I. There on Amazon was my artwork gracing one of Shipman’s  products. Terrific. No, he does not have permission and the lousy excuse of buying stolen artwork will not hold water as that piece of artwork is sitting in my stairwell. Jim Shipman is simply a thief. I really dislike thieves. Alot.

Amazon, in the past, has respected the IP rights of his victims and removed items. After five letters, the item is still listed but not available at this time. Progress.

So all you table top gamers out there, especially the Tunnel and Trolls enthusiasts, please do not patronize him. Buy from the legitimate seller which is Flying Buffalo. More extensive articles of his doings  can be found here and here.

Incidentally, I deal with this sort of nonsense about every other month. The web is a free for all……….not!!

This past weekend temperatures reached near 65 degrees and what a perfect day for a drive through the Connecticut countryside to go and see some original pulp cover art at the Benton Museum.

The museum is located on the UConn campus and offered a display of works by many well known ‘pulp’ artists.  There was also an exhibit of sensationalist type newspapers from the late 1880′s -1900′s along with a number of examples of the well known ‘dime novels’.  It was a thrill to actually see actual examples.

The paintings were a visual treat and quite instructive. I got to see one of my favorite paintings by James Allen St. John. It is the cover art for the April 1933 issue of Weird Tales and depicts an immense spectral tiger with riders atop a mountain looking down on some men on camel back. No paper image I have ever seen of this piece prepared me for just how beautiful and vibrant the color was and the application of the paint itself is simply lost in translation. Truly beautiful! Right next to it was a smaller piece he did for the December 1936 Weird Tales Cover depicting The Fire of Ashurbanipal by Robert E. Howard and then next to it was a Virgil Finlay and next to that a Baumhofer next to a Rozen next to a Herndon ….and it just kept going like that.

The next room had several works by Frank Paul for Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories. Then there was an entire wall of Shadow and Spider original cover artwork which was followed by a wonderful piece by Laurence Herndon for the Blue Book, November 1930 issue. This depicts Tarzan against a sun drenched ancient temple protecting the hapless female behind him. Overhead he sports an evil doer native and is just getting ready to throw his foe  into a pile of his buddies. Grand adventure!

A jaw dropping show of work and imagery that I certainly won’t forget. Below are some pictures of what we saw.

Templecon 2010 was terrific!

This year, it was held at the Inn at the Crossroads. This site is easier to get to and had plenty of free parking. Having the convention in a large, accommodating,  luxury hotel was a real treat.

On Friday evening, I ran a Call of Cthulhu game for a 4 hour stint. Then we did some shopping with the Clockwork Bazaar merchants.  Saturday was more shopping, doing the art show, and schmoozing. In the afternoon,  Manuela ran a Yoga session and then a jewelry making workshop for the attendees.  Later that evening, we participated in the variety show. Manuela performed two dance numbers and helped me do the last, for awhile anyway, performance of the Tail of the Dorset Duckling along with Terrance and Grimpen at the controls.

A very short but very cool clip of Ameena in Godzilla drag at the variety show at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBcGft28SPU

A steampunk fashion show followed and then a costume contest after that. Then off to an invitation party for the performers which, likely as not, was the coolest party I will ever attend. We finally wrapped the evening up with an independent stop motion film of E.A. Poe’s Annabelle Lee at a midnight showing. The next day, we hung around some more, marveling at the gaming tables and all the miniatures, and then bought more books from C.J. Henderson, one of our favorite authors.

A full and rewarding weekend, indeed. The TempleCon folks wrote me a few days later to tell me people were raving about my Call of Cthulhu session and asked if I would do another in 2011. Well then, that is what I call booking in advance. We are looking forward to TempleCon 2011. Support your local convention!

HAPPY NEW YEAR and the best of whatever it is that you seek for yourself in 2010! Yep, I know it is a bit past the new year but Life has a way of sticking her fingers in my pudding and messing things up. The least of  Her meddling lately is a broken rib incurred from sword fighting. I am just going to have to learn to protect myself better! Anyway, the following is a list of the events that I am going to be involved with in the next couple of months. If you are attending, please come on by and say hello!

January 15-17 Arisia 2010 Cambridge, Ma……art show

January 29-30 Birka Market, SCA, Manchester NH……fencing

February 5-7 Templecon, Warwick, RI………..art show, puppet performance, CoC game

February 12-14 Boskone 47, Boston, MA………art show

February 26, Odditoruium, Canbridge, MA……..puppet performance.

The February 26th date at the Odditorium show will be the debut of my new poem called Ten Pound Lafitte.  It’s a rousing story about a chef and an unwilling frog. Terrance and Grimpen will be doing the performance.

Hope to see y’all about!

Two of my puppet creations, Terrance and Grimpen, who have helped me stage several plays this year have an Important Public Service Message they would like to pass on!!

Happy Halloween! I hope y’all had the best of the best day of the year. Festivities for us actually started the night before when we  went to see  F.W.  Murnau’s  1922 classic, Nosferatu, accompanied by a musical arrangement by the Devil’s Music Ensemble. It was a real treat. The next day brought wild weather as warm winds from a southerly storm shook and bent the trees all day. Brightly colored leaves swirled everywhere. An anniversary dinner for our fourteenth year, some old black white movies and then off to a friends house for a costume party. A great day and evening!

Taking advantage of a rare beautiful weather day, I got out and finally finished the fence. This meant fashioning some gate latches with the scrap lumber I had left and then putting up some decorative trellis like pieces over the main gate. And then onto the final section of work. The finials.

Finials are necessary for the life of the post. You need to prevent water from getting into the ends of the posts for during the winter, when that water freezes, it will render the posts worthless. I had decided on flat surfaces, so we could put items on top to decorate but it took a while for me to find the perfect material. I tried a wood plank but just could not seem to find a piece that understood what straight and flat meant. Casting about, I came upon the perfect finials at a local discount lumberyard. For 12 bucks, I scored 28 pieces of slate sized 6×6 and 6×8. A bit of liquid nails and voila!! They went up as easily as I had imagined.

We already have one resident up. The next is a T-rex with plans during the winter to create and fill all the available spots with something fun overlooking the yard.

      Congratulations to my son, Matt and his wife Sue who have had their first. Her name is Zoey,  7 pounds 4 ounces, everything intact and healthy and ready whoop it up. Note the great monkey toes!! This kiddo comes into a world stuffed with relatives, cousins, and every version of grand someone that you can think of. The challenge will be not spoiling her!