the Stick.

The stick came in over the counter. 



Nobody knew exactly whether it was equestrian, military, ornamental, or had some other function. Tapered black lacquer about two feet long, brass tip bottom, but with a huge brass knob on the top and a big number "3" in relief on the crown. A jocky's crop? An officer's short staff? Odd gent's accessory? Magick wand? Who cared! It was neat and fell into the hand easily. 



We'd been giddily branishing it about for a week or so, Ed hitting his people with the retail lovetaps, Sean daringly flipping it over near precarious stacks of CDs, Scott using it to help sell a VHS Charlie Chaplin box set, and Violet marching around with it like a parade baton. The stick was one of those items we would all play with for a good long while before we'd actually bother putting the thing out for sale because we enjoyed having it around. 



Tim calls me to electronics in that unnecessarily imperative way he has, so I grabbed the stick for backup on my way over. His panties in a bunch over why some complainer hasn't purchased an Xbox 360 request, I point at the system, flick my wrist to bring the stick over in a whistling arc in front of his face -- then we notice the knob's flown off somewhere and bust out laughing. After five minutes of crawling about the floor to look for it, complete with jests about "my knob being lost in Mary's box", it turns up on the lowest tier of a cart, nestled in a cleaning rag right in plain sight. 



"Hey, what's that grey powder on the floor next to it?" Tim asks. I pick up the brass knob and even more silt falls out of it to the floor. 



Taking a closer look, an inscription on the knob's collar reads: "Clyde O. Maddox Jr, 1st Lt, O3D13005, Korea 1959-60". 



"Holy cats! That's not dust! That's human cremains!" I'm simultaneously amazed & mortified, and suddenly feel completely horrible for spilling someone all over the carpet. 



"Oh my God!" Greg says. 

"Ewwwww!" Mary says. 

"Now the store's going to have a third ghost!" Samantha says. 



After getting a brush and dustpan, Tim & I proceed to get as much of Clyde as we could off the cart and floor and back into the head of his stick. 



Someone had sold us a bit of dead person. It's priced for $5, so that means we picked him up for about $2.50 in trade credit or probably a cool $1 in cash. 



The Grant store's still not quite sure what to do with Clyde, whether that's find his family, turn him over to a veteran's organization, or see what the military has to say, but we think we're probably not going to resell him for $5 in any case. As of this writing, he rests on my office desk, and he seems okay there for now until we figure something out. 



And maybe it wasn't just us that was so fond of the stick. Maybe it was the stick who was fond of us for liking it so. Thank you for coming in, Lt Clyde. Our staff salutes you.

[Not our stick, but Charles Darwin's walking stick, for illustrative purposes.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

more than Song & Dance.

[Recently a singer/dancer/actress captured my attention by bravely writing an affectionate tribute to the Gothic in an honest effort to set down an understanding of the culture to which we are all dedicants. In turn, this brief & humble essay emerges as my sincere & complimentary effort to underscore her raison d'etre. This is for you, Lil' Miss. On with the show ... .]



The power of the musical stems from its ability to step into the same odd communicative space possessed the by surreality of dreams. Everything operates as normal, but when narrative moves towards a situation where emotion can no longer be contained, all is uplifted or downtempo'd into the empathetic superconsciousness of song & the actively hyperphysical expression of dance. 



If done wrong musical numbers feel like a device crudely meant to deceive an audience, a smothering of cheese to hide the thin insubstantial crust. If done right the arrangements build on the strength of story & character to make that risky grand jete off of solid ground into the aural realm, where instrument & lyric transmit soul. 



Watch Fred Astaire as he extends his matchless wit as far as he can, then break out into song to take it that much further, feet tapping away with an excitement towards crescendo, or a calming softshoe slowly sanding the floor with a grace & style beyond conventional gesture. He's not just dancing to dance or singing to sing for its own sake; he's out there to win Audrey Hepburn's heart and he must use his whole being in a choreography of skill and seeming abandon to which she can do naught else but irresistably chorus & partner. It will draw her hand into his, and in a matter of steps, there will come a harmony neither ever knew existed, and can only exist with none but each other. 



Those moments make one wish we really could get away with such seductively crooning magicks & moving excesses of sincerity outside a contrived karaoke serenade or the usual drunken dancefloor invitations. 



And this longing is the charm of it all, the infusion of spirit we receive from the musical, a form both evolved and inspired, the release of dance offered with the renewal of song. It clues into what we feel, and in turn, makes us feel. The musical artfully manages to affirm & amplify ourselves in a way that no other form can, and that is its miracle.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

lensification: the glam of the cam.

My friend Nadine stands trapped behind glass. It's hour 26 of her nonstop shoeshop of just being in a window on the main drag in downtown Tucson. You can see the madness in her eyes, the tight rictus of skin supported by nothing less than fraying enthusiam, nicotine, booze, and the structural integrity of four drywalled coats of yellow Mac base and a greasepaint blue raccoon mask under high birdsnest hair, like some fugitive from NYC's late-1990s clubbery. I watch on the webcam feed from work and laugh at how silly, logging in bits of supportive chat, remembering she was only talking about doing this promotional bit a month ago over drinks at a bar just before she quit work to chase her dream. And, oddly, I'm eating it up, unable to pull away from her ridiculous lure. Hours later, I'm in the window on the other side of her loaner laptop's lens.



"Hey, I brought you a cigar. And I'm sure you're tired of the prop balloon animals you've got so I brought my favourite pair of real Springbok horns I gluegunned on a hairband to play with!" She puts them on, a wide-eyed hallucinatory child, and we proceed to drink these bullets of blueberry ale a fangirl brought her. I usually hate blueberries -- they're the devil's fruit. But in frosted scones or well-crafted microbrew at 8% they get a pass, and while showboating in a window to hundreds of passerbys it's the nectar of goodtimes.



And we're totally showboating. I suddenly find myself not only talking to 'Dini but to the camera, like it's a real person in the room, and not an inanimate apparatus. Before you know it, we throw on the Beastie Boys' "Root Down" and we shake arse, doing the Michael Jackson Woo Crotch Grab and The Shopper. Nadie sprays a Windex knockoff on the inside of the glass, sticking her flyers up with the moisture for people to read, as oggling boys put their lips to the dirty outside and blowfish back at her. Oh, and there's some way cute 20-something girl who got slipped a ruffie passed out on the couch in our little 4'x12' room. But we're live and feeding to the world and being fed in return, heard by the responsive chatroom audience. And some of them even know me. Sure, it's no more than nine voyeurs from cyberland at any one time, but it's the dynamic that counts.



You realize that the webcam, or just cameras in general, make one performative. You know people are watching in realtime, or during some later date in forever future, and even the least bit extroverted will shamelessly amp themselves up. The observer affects the observed. But the phenomenon is even more pronounced on the other end. We watch people everyday whom we don't even know, whether that's just pimping it on the street, on television, or streamed on the internet, and they seem bigger than us in some fashion because the camera refracted through our mind's eye magnifies them. They are the presented examples, the stars of our show, and we've willfully submitted to their presentation. There's an active/passive validation at work and its magick is hellahypnostrong.



As I left an audience member typed in, "Oh, you guys are having the best time!" Nadine and I look at each other and guffaw. "That's what she thinks!"



"But Nadine, from the outside it looks true! Just being up on the screen makes it seem 20 times better than that, so it doesn't matter because the interpretation is what sells it." Then I speak to the laptop. "But you Tucson kids out there are more savvy than that, right? We really do love you all." 



Tonight I got to taste what it was to be both supplicant and deity. It's fun to be a local god again. Thank you for your prayers, and this is my sincerest of gospels.

#    #    # 

While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

regard for the Gothic.

The Gothic has become a bit of punchline for the macroculture, for a seemingly false posture, a misanthrope, a social oddity, for someone who has gone "wrong". The macroculture however labels something once and never really bothers to examine it, to get past its appearance because it can't really be troubled to accept something so profound that might upset its limited ideas of what's true. 

And the truth really is that the Gothic is at the deep black heart of the world. 

Mythologies tend to begin with Darkness before the creation of the earth & sky, man & beasts. Even before the gods appear to cast first light, or land & sea marry, there is Night, primordial & chthonic -- it's integral, the canvas against which all is painted, and what's left in those same mythologies after the turpentine of time washes all that creation away in fire & flood, bangs or whimpers. Darkness is the permanent in a universe of impermanence. 

Goths recognize this: That besides being made of stars, we are also just as much, if not more, made of shadow, the spaces between the matter where the invisible desires of gravity and attraction hold everything together. The unconscious recognition of this force is something far beyond the misperceived need to be different, or to belong to a clique, or the compulsion to dance to majestic memento mori music. 

And so often we're asked by both the disrespectful & the sincerely curious just what is the Gothic, and all too frequently I've watched an equal exchange of the dismissive and sarcastic -- and that's sad, because it makes us no better than the intolerant. If we wish to be understood and not just culturally scapegoated by the media and those who don't question its pronouncements, then it would pay to be ready for when the braver passersby do stop and directly voice their wonder at the insight we represent. 

Why care what the rank & file think? Because there can be consequences if we don't. How many times do you see the flicker of Columbine behind the hateful eyes of others? And of course we know those little trenchcoated prats who stroked off to endless games of "Doom" & dog-eared copies of "Mein Kampf" were never Gothic, but damned if the major networks didn't decide to label them from day one as such. Ignorant bastards and their lazy journalism married to the now orthodox pop psych trend of blaming everyone but the individuals responsible. 

While the scene is thought of being predominantly gangly Caucasian teens who feel socially disenfranchised by the norms, this is just the holdover from the sun deprived & undernourished Anglais of an early 1980s London. That stereotype no longer holds, if it ever was an ideal more than a default. Now you go to Goth clubs like Roderick's Chamber in San Francisco, with its sinewy black men & mysterious Asian women, or Toronto's Sanctuary and see violet-eyed Hindu girls doing the kick-and-turn in big numbers, and it confirms that it truly is not so, and that our tribe's beauty & variants cut across all veins. 

Having endured for so long to carve out our hard-won legitimacy, we certainly don't owe anyone apologies nor are we to be held accountable for explanations about whom we choose to be in our grand excess of eyeliner & blackened fingernails, but we can grace the world with a winning diplomacy & patience we're more than intellectually capable of. 

Ultimately, with all the specialized niche media and marketing, there's enough room in this house of alternate ideas for all the subcultures to thrive, while being given the mental real estate to adorn themselves more richly as they grow -- if they are able to evolve as judiciously as the Gothic has. I've just never agreed with anyone that mistakenly thinks we have to be nasty about it when someone wants to take a look over the fence and try to see or understand what's happening in our garden. They may even taste its dark fruit and decide they like it far better. And even with such new blood we will never be the macroculture -- thankfully -- but we will always be present, the shadow between the buildings where the light never reaches, a perfect pitch inside the heart's secret conservatory, the eternal stillness that compliments the pulse, for we really are no less than the undeniable dark at the heart of the world.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

the fallacy of social networks.

I must begin by saying that I don't buy into the idea of a "virtual community". The phrase itself reveals its oxymoronic limitations, as the concept is seeded by falsity from the get-go.



Largest case in point: Facebook. Why is Facebook fake? Are those 1,289 so-called friends going to buy you a drink tonight at the club, bother to make & bring you chicken bullion when you've got a cold, come pick you up when you've got car trouble, or bail you out of jail? No, they aren't.



Recently an umpteenth friend of mine exhorted, "You should get a Facebook. And just wait until someone adds you -- it's the best feeling!"



"Oh really? Better than sex?", I asked pointedly.



"Um, well no." And the exaggeration of it all began to dawn on her.



A page is just a page, a fill-in-the-blank non-paper representation of a person's perception of themselves, which may not even be them. Just go search for Claire Standish from "The Breakfast Club" or Ferris Bueller and you'll get nine of them. And that's not even a real person. Think you're friends with George Clooney? Think again.



Users generally slap together overcluttered pages, busily wallpapered with annoying midis, or animated gifs, even trite and unnecessary videoclips lifted from the distorted lens of television. These are not real nor honest representations. And the text is rife with baselessly clever attempts having no depth or substance. And face it -- most of the hits you're getting are probably from some glammed-out-in-your-fancy-sexpot-boots picture you put up, or from some flippant & ridiculous countercultural pose in lighting that doesn't exist in nature. It's someone at their most winning if it's them at all, and perhaps that's insightful in a limited way, but it's not really them 24-7, which is all a setup for disappointment if you ever met. And maybe even then said photo gallery visitor shan't bother to read a word of what you have to say, which is ultimately far more important than any photoset.



Such online networks only impart a false sense of intimacy. Still more than six degrees of electronics & geography away, we've been sold an illusion that an add is better than a handshake. And while those comments you post to someone, or the inbox messages you receive might illicit an emotion, it's in isolation, self-generated, with no real interactive event or other corporeal presence to reference. We keep tabs & bookmarks in the virtual so we can more easily take each other for granted without putting forth any real attention or commitment in what probably never was or will be a real friendship.



Without any postmodern realization about what they are doing, it feels as if everyone is building these cybershrines to slotlist these comparative images and shortlist answers about ourselves, 2-D temples of ego, all packed in an invisible server's silicone filing cabinet. The hint of shirttail reality is that it all refers back to the physical world, that these pictures of things, those goods we click upon, the email we traffic in are only phosphors or LCD ghosts, a nothing. 'Tis all a maia because there still isn't a "WarGames" where you push "Y" to execute superpowers via DOS, much less a trigger button to permaheadshot your enemy outside a cyber deathmatch.



None of it matters until the box is on your doorstep, you set foot on that faraway soil, or you hold a cuppa and look each other in the eye and touch actuality, the fist connecting, the discomfiting silence, the slippery bliss of a slow kiss. That's the sugar you really want.



So what does this stance have to do with my bothering to write this negation, and your precious time reading it? It is this: If I choose to give you anything at all, it will be myself, because that's the one precious thing that I have to bestow, and that's what I will post on my page & within my words to you.

[Not me, just photo illustration.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

On Horlogerie: My pursuit of replication.

When that GQ style issue fell open on that watch ad with the pilot wearing the sweet old school leather helmet and goggles, I knew I was having a moment. It wasn't the branding, which I'd never heard of before, but the aesthetic. Based on WW2 airplane gauges, the watch called to my currently SteamGoth addled imaginings. Besides, both my mechanical-have-to-wind-it-up watches were gummed up, and it cost me $125 alone to repair one of them only a year ago, so it was a worthwhile justification to upgrade my previous daily & dress watches to mechanical automatics.



The first thing you find hitting authorized timepiece dealers is sticker shock. Nice watches tend to be a rich man's game. The Bell & Ross didn't look to be any great shakes, but their 03-92 I only wanted in stainless steel turned out to be just under $3,000. As far as luxury brands go it's a gonga, but no way was that anywhere within reality. Hell, it wasn't even in my city as the nearest dealer was over 200 miles away.



So unreality was what I needed to pursue: a replica. Not so I could fake any sort of false prestige in saying I had a Bell & Ross, but in that I had fallen in love with the aspects of its highly polished beveled edges, the satin finished casing, its anti-reflective unscratchable sapphire crystal, luminous hands & numbers, and the single-minded purity of its smooth Swiss movement.



The research? Three months of Wikipedia, long threads from replica watch forums, digging into manufacturers' technical white papers, referencing catalogue thick glossy watch mags, alot of back and forth correspondence with a couple replica dealers, squinting at online pics of sequential teardowns, and reading many posts by a really spot-on mechanically objective user, LysanderXIII (props to L13!). And those three months also allowed me to save up for my purchases.



From all this due diligence I have learned what factors make for a quality watch, that replicas are sometimes comparable, and why watch geeks really are justified in their geeking out.



The heart of any automatic watch is its movement, the spring driven mechanical construct that determines its accuracy. Depending on who makes the movement, what grade of movement they're selling, and if that individual movement is certified, adds up to how accurate that watch is.



Believe it or not, Swatch, creators of the must-have 1980s battery-powered quartz plastic fashion watch, own the dominant supplier of watch movements to the world, the Swiss ETA (eh-tah [not to be confused with the Basque separatists]).



On the high end, most automatic watch movements are models or variants of ETA's 2824 or 2892 movements. The 2824 was originally designed in the 1950s, while the 2892 came about in the 1970s, when there was a need for a thinner mechanical movement during the advent of thinner Quartz watches. ETA makes movements in four grades: Standard, Elaborated, Top, and Chronometer. As of this writing the Standard 2824 goes for ~$130, the Elaborated 2892 (there's no Standard grade) around ~$220. The differences between the four grades are usually the quality of parts used to make up the movement (i.e. spring materials, shock absorption system, type of ruby jeweling, etc) with Chronometer being determined by official third-party testing.



The Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres, (the Official Swiss Chronometer Testing Institute), or COSC, grades watches as chronometers if they meet a standard of -4/+6 seconds per day. But these tests are performed on the movement alone, meaning that it's not even tested in the case, which isn't respective of the real world. That and only 3% of Swiss watches sold are even COSC tested and their movements engraved with a unique COSC serial number to prove it.



Yet even more exacting than this are watches that have been Observatory graded. In places like Kew and Glashütte (glas-soot) during the 1800s there were competitions where watchmakers would show up with their finest offerings and accuracy would be tested, usually for nautical use, at an actual observatory. These tests were more realistic in that not only were the movements tested in different positions at rest at different temperatures, but were left in their cases, and even tested while being moved around to simulate actual body and travel motion. Only recently have the Germans resurrected the Observatory grade of testing, which seems a far more honest way to gauge accuracy because at the end of the day the consumer buys a watch as a whole and not just a naked movement. This makes for the lesser-known fact that German watches from Glashütte are the most accurate, but since the Swiss have established themselves as the cornerstone of fine timepieces this difference goes mostly unnoticed.



All this de rigueur and quality control determines some of the price differences, while market, brand perception, and limited supply determines the other. And the exceeding demand and high-end four-to-six figure luxury price hike creates another market: the replica market.



At one point ETA sent Swiss technicians into then-UK Hong Kong to train Chinese watch repair staff how to work on their movements. Little did they suspect that not only would they learn, but master the skills enough to clone their movements. While in most instances the clones aren't as finished with the Geneva striping or pearlage (the fancy circular beveling) or higher grade parts, sometimes they actually are, and for all appearances are pretty indistinguishable. Shopping online renders hordes of replica Rolex, Cartier, Panerai, Omega, Phillipe Patek, and others. Sometime there's even models that the original luxury brand never made, which gives the buyer some especially creative options and "limited editions".



The B&R 03-92 I coveted uses an Elaborated 2892 (ergo the 92 in the model number), but looking around I could only find replicas with a Standard 2836-2 inside (a later version of the 2824). The 2892 has a maximum variation of +/-20 seconds per day, with the 2836-2 having +/-30 seconds per day. Given that I was still getting a real Swiss ETA movement with only a possible 10 seconds maximum difference, made in the same 316L steel, and with a "croc" band at 1/10th the total cost of the actual B&R I was more than sold on the replica, which showed up inside of two weeks and turned out to be 25-hours-a-day of kick-ass retrostalgia.

[Yes, that's my wrist.]

While it's illegal to make and sell replica watches, it's not illegal to buy and own them. And like the Bolsheviks exporting faux Faberge products to establish themselves, the Chinese government doesn't actively pursue manufacturers of replica Western goods, which means the global grey market for replicas isn't going anywhere.



Caveat emptor: The replica market by nature is one of questionable ethics. There are many horror stories of people getting something not even close to resembling what they saw online, watches with functions that don’t work, dealers that don’t respond once you’ve sent a gob of money far beyond reach, customs confiscations, and general customer service nightmares aplenty. Find a dealer with good feedback on watch forums, and pictures of actual product received by actual customers. Most dealers are all selling the same replica watch from the watchmaking district of Guangzhou, so comparison shop, and make note of differences in descriptions, pictures, and especially the movement, of which the best case scenario is having a picture of the actual movement in the watch case. Take the time to ask specific and detailed questions until you get satisfactory responses before you commit to purchase. While with replicas you’re saving a considerable amount of money, be sure you don’t lose what you’re spending.



On the legitimate side before the replica market, the Chinese actually began their own watch making tradition in 1955 (and way before that, Chinese royalty had a love affair with Swiss Bovet watches, even using them as a medium of exchange). But the communists ordered four men to make a watch from scratch, and soon the Wu Xing (Five Stars) from Tianjin Watch Factory was born. By 1961 they were making chronographs for their Air Force, and much later morphed into Sea-Gull, the officially licensed and distributed Chinese watch brand, using their own ST-series of movements.



For my dress watch upgrade I found the Power Reserve Parnis, a Chinese homage to the German-made A. Lange & Söhne, who once provided watches to Zeppelin airship crews. (See how that totally came back around to the SteamGoth thing?) Homage watches aren't replicas; they're clearly their own brand, but made in the style of another watch, usually a high-end one. This particular Parnis is a great choice as it uses Sea-Gull's well-executed ST-25 movement, which is essentially an ETA 2892-based design, and the watch has an exhibition back that shows off the decorated rotor and movement, so I can see and appreciate the workmanship involved. Plus it has a date complication, which the Langematik it's based on doesn't have. Surprisingly, it cost less than a third of what I picked up my B&R for, and even seems to be slightly more accurate so far, which speaks volumes for the Chinese in a business where seconds do count.

[Uncommonly vertical subdials. Swankomatik!]

Given the longstanding ETA models above, watch movements haven't really changed much from their basic design. Design infringement aside, some of the passive argument for replicas is that if the Asian makers can duplicate $3K-$10K+ high-end timepieces for only $100-$1,500, then it finally forces the horologists to up their game to the point of where actual advances and improvements will be made. The last decade or so saw the advent of the gyro and flying tourbillon, and while the regular tourbillon's been around for 100 years, making a carriage spin around on itself and even gyroscope in reverse like a haunted garden armillary to ensure greater accuracy is pretty dazzling.



And new materials such as beryllium or silicone for hairsprings, 3/4 or microrotors that put less wear and weight on the pinons while working even more effectively and give different looks to the rear of the works now force the replica makers to chase the new technologies. The Spring Drive, crafted by Japanese watchmaker Seiko, uses an electronic break to moderate the mainspring's release, giving exceptional accuracy. Mechanical traditionalists might call that "cheating" but the electronics involved are mechanically powered and thus are still automatically regulated.



Bottom line is that a cheap battery powered quartz digital you can pick up for $20 is more accurate than any Swiss mechanical no matter how much you shell out for it. Even the Swiss will admit this because they use digitals to measure their mechanicals. So why all the fuss over something that works less proficiently and is more expensive to produce? Because the analog hands on the clock are the analog to our hands, the same hands that design, define, and drive the miracle that is the wristwatch. The imperfection and variance of a mechanical movement has a beauty that's almost organic by comparison, and contains an art that reflects the striving to make a solid clockwork measure & capture the ephemerality of time, a quality that is ultimately more conscious perception than mathematical absolute.

[Exploded view of the ETA 2836-2. Beautiful genius/madness.]

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12/2013 Addenda: While the Bell & Ross with its ETA movement hasn't given me a lick of bother, mechanically the Parnis has needed to be sent back to Guangzhou three times in the two years I've owned it for losing hours, stalling, and misgauging the power reserve. The forums may tell you that the ST-25 Sea-Gull's a "premium movement", yet my experience seems less than optimal. While Parnis' very willing customer service repairs all their product for free, sending it overseas for $12 shipping at a month's absence speaks otherwise -- though this still totally beats a U.S. $20 bench charge plus parts & labor. Will update if the troubles continue.



12/2019 Addenda: The Bell & Ross unexpectedly stopped, so I emailed PureTime to authorize a repair, but 18-years on after my purchase I was told they no longer service my particular replica as they now use different works for their current replicas, and they advised me to purchase one of their current ones. Their current B&R selections were about half the price, and pricing a local repair was only a bit more. Noticing that most of their current B&R replica models didn't have ETAs, I opted for the repair to keep the better Swiss works. Point here is that in the very, very longterm, unlike luxury firms, replica makers may not continue to support their product, so far future repairs may happen out-of-pocket as opposed to warranty. Mathwise, I'm still wayyyy ahead on the buy, so while that disappointing lack of product support & repair cost was unexpected, if such a repair occurs at so long an interval, a good replica is still worth it.

3/2025 Addenda: The Bell & Ross replica started stopped and losing minutes as opposed to seconds. I took it in to a recommended local shop for ETA works as the last local guy who worked on the watch had died shortly after, and the mall store I'd last taken it to had charged me quite a bit more than I'd anticipated. They called me after attempting to disassemble the watch and noticed that an previous repair had instead used epoxy to stick the face onto the front of the works, which then made the works unremovable from the case. I asked about sonic cleaning or adhesive remover or heated application but all of these would either ruin the face or the works in some fashion, which would then prove quite beyond any reasonable cost, and they didn't want to try to attempt it given such bad outcomes, so the repairman advised to just get a new watch. While I'm annoyed that one of the last two places that worked on it decided to use glue as opposed to getting a new face or getting the two stands for it that fit into the works correctly, there's nothing for it at this point but to start shopping again. All my previous experience with replicas stills stands as the B&R rep lasted me a good 14 years (and the Parnis homage still runs) and has only been pooched by a lazy maintenance repair and not a terminal failure of the watch itself, so I'm shopping for another comparable and reputable replica. 

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

The Carnival of Illusion.

"Which way's the magic show?"



"We don't have a magic show," insisted the concierge. "We have a 'Carnival of Illusion'!"



Leading the way to a nice doorgirl/promoter who pointed out my name on the reservations list ... without any hint of who I was ... even before the show began. (Just psychic? Or secret Italian gypsy strega princess? Hmmmm.)



Once through the curtains, low slung tables and pedestals show off trappings of historical magicians, sepia-toned daguerreotypes of serious people, peacock feathers in brass spittoons, and bejeweled boxes with unknown contents from dark corners of Asia. Implications of travel, a thick black and gold ticket, velvet pile and damask hangings all have a terrific RomantiGoth setpiece feel to them.



Yet for all its Victorian window-dressings, there's something almost postmodern going on under the ruffled hemlines at Sarlot & Eyed's "Carnival of Illusion". You know it's a magic show, they know it's a magic show, and because of this there's a mental combination of shrug and wink which occurs at that cognitive crossroads that are completely acknowledged during the first few conjurings. But in a very quick reversal this matching pair makes you feel like you've taken a mysteriously exciting wrong train a couple stations ago, the compartment door's locked, and it's too late to get off now.



The whole hour-long affair mostly doesn't stray too far from the conventions of clever math, decks of cards, linking rings, folding of money, slights of hand, and bladed objects, but it's not the tricks that are exceptional -- it's Susan & Roland's unique delivery of their material that will charm the socks and garters off anyone who meets them. Using stylized movements, sophisticated and warm patter, sketch character acting, leading questions, and a proper alchemy of grace and humanity, they renew and give personal context to tricks of the trade and illusions you may have seen before, but never with this palpable sense of affection for the art of illusion and matchless savoir faire.



And above this, Roland conjures a couple David Blaine moments, when your suspension of disbelief actually no longer needs suspenders and you slackjawedly wonder how he just managed to pull off that bit of miraculous weirdness. He's arch and has this knowing look about him, but not in a condescending way like some illusionists, more in an intimate here-let-me-share-this-with-you fashion.



Case in point, my personal brush with Roland's phenomena: Being selected from the audience is never something I shoot for, but if you're the Gothic with a top hat in a small parlour audience limited to 35 people, you're unavoidably going to get picked to go up front. During an illusion called "Postcards Around the World" somehow three cards from a stack of 10 were dematerialized out from under my very-secured-to-its-chair behind, and just as mysteriously rematerialized under a lady's derriere across the room. For my bafflement and cooperation Roland awarded me with a large box of M&Ms.



And as for the very winning Miss Eyed, there's an Uno Attack-like moment as cards aggressively launch themselves from a brazier and she even more aggressively skewers a five of hearts in midair on the tip of her sword -- a card drawn by an audience member only minutes before, and completely uneyed by Miss Eyed. She's lovely, energetic, quite the dancer, and possesses expressive orbs that more than merit her surname. All that, an aisle of chips, and she gives great email.



True magic has been resurrected in the parlour at the DoubleTree in Tucson, and if you want a taste of what might possibly be on the real supernatural wonder, you'll go place yourselves in the deft hands of Sarlot & Eyed's "Carnival of Illusion".

[Miss Eyed & Sir Sarlot. Go get a fancy ticket to see them at www.carnivalofillusion.com or book them for your next fête.] 

P.S. No, I'm not being paid to write ad copy, or comped in any way to endorse said performers whom I had never met until tonight. I'm up at 5 am, a whole nine hours later, writing this and still thinking about how brilliant it was, okay? Okay.

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Addenda/Updated Disclosure (4.21.14): So since posting this show review back in 2010, I've hung out socially with these local living performance treasures, played much Jenga, smoked hookah, and then had the honour of being hired to successfully draft the text of the new version of their current souvenir program! Recently watched their performance again with some great changes (mentalism, op-art costumes, & knife-throwing!) and building upon all the same strengths they already have in their show, plus the now much more poetic program. They rock magic socks!

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

the Legacy of Tron.

The success of 1982's "Tron" was because it rode the crest of arcade culture. If you were a kid pumping quarters into those arcade machines back in the day, you ate, drank, and sweated pixels because underneath it all you felt as though something more important was being accomplished on the other side of the screen. It was split-second life-or-death reaction times, and the payoff was when Flynn ends up on the other side of the cathode glass, and you find out it's all horrifically true: That we as users are electronic caesars committing our progamme gladiators to fight it out and kill for us, again and again and again.



Given how well that ethos of translation played out, you'd expect this 3.0 (because 2.0 already happened in a PC & console release awhile ago), that the game grid and digital environs would now reflect the ideas of time-consuming MMORPGs, first-person shooters, real-time strategy sims, higher-speed internet communications, terragig storage, smartphone applications, sexting, and all the other bells and whistles such technology has gifted us with in the last 28 years since the original "Tron". Instead what we have are updated designs on much of the things in the first film, plus a few new vehicles that should fly off toy shelves in time for the holidays. (Yes, I bought a die-cast Light Runner.)



Perhaps the true Legacy here is this: The investment of $200 million into this sequel only supports the fact that the 1980s still and will always rule the cultural school.

[Excellent double feature art poster credit to Eric Tan.]

Best bit? The Score. Pounding threat, electronics laced with a nearly human jarvik heartbeat so you know something's at risk. While Daft Punk's never been past a fun and rarified novelty, if they don't win an Oscar for this soundtrack, there's no justice on the aural grid.



The strength of Tron is its setting with all that it implies. The moment of emotional reaction of user being trapped in a computer world, that emotionally neutral wonderland of cold blues and angry reds being the dominant factor. Contrast with the compounding of Sam Flynn's reactions, and pushed over the edge by Michael Sheen's over the top performance as Castor, and what was once the placid cyberworld is now upstaged and imbalanced. The only apologetic I can fathom would be that since programs are now more sophisticated their behavior would be more emotional to reflect that, but the film doesn't imply this, and I had to come up with it.



Olivia Wilde is the digital hotness, and on top of that every lady in tightly glowing striped pajamas in this film is. Notably, icy blonde Beau Garrett's the digital coolness as Gem.



Nit picks: Jeff Bridges young computer generated face looked like digital botox -- it just never looked organically believeable. The light cycle sequence didn't have the uncontrollably insane velocity that was so felt in the first movie. Yes, it had alot of clever dynamic changes, but if it'd been rendered differently it might have possessed the hammering-heart-pushed-up-into-your-now-choking-neck thrill it should have.



And for a movie encapsulating the currents of lightspeed electrons, pacing flagged in a few spots. In the first even when there were moments you were learning something about the digital frontier, and it was more the still hum of a machine that you knew could wake up at any second. Here in parts where the chase isn't on, it's more like the machine's i7 got swapped for a P1 and you're waiting for the flippy hourglass to turn back into a cursor so you can get on with it.

Visually everything's very, very pretty. Spatially well defined, imparting a sense of place one'd love to visit and is left wanting more of at the end of two hours.



As a sequel "Tron Legacy" doesn't stand alone, but it makes a worthy successor to one of Disney's most ambitious modern classics. Helmets off to the house of mouse. Now let's go play some deadly frisbee on the Wii!



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Post-Review Film-Influenced Addenda:



from 12.3.14:

Exciting Tron-esque teaser panel from "Batman Incorporated" issue #7 (July 2011).

Followed by Batgirl on lightcycle in issue #8 (August 2011).

Morrison & Clark may have partially wanted to homage 1990's "Batman: Digital Justice" (and "Dick Tracy" from the dialogue and catchphrase in that first panel [clever!]), the first completely computer illustrated graphic novel, but the lines of light, neon primaries, and the lightcycle are pure "Tron Legacy", and speaks alot for Tron programming our expectations of what a virtual reality version of the internet might look like as Bruce Wayne upsells it to potential investors.



A month before the film, Marvel did a few "Tron Legacy" style variant covers as promotion for Disney, its parent company:

[Thor.]

[Spider-Man. Note Tron City-scape.]

From 9.12.13:



And then they got in ... to the real world:

[Happy accident lightcycle race in foreground. Photo credit goes to yours truly.]

It seems "Tron Legacy" director & professor of architecture Joseph Kosinski's design sensibilities & lightline styling accents have influenced someone else, and actually crossed through an I/O tower to rez up as Tucson's aLoft Hotel at Speedway & Campbell. At night it really does look like a data construct from The Grid.



from 8.3.13 at 4:07am:



Then there's nights when one re-screens with your peeps:Yes, Stacia & I derezz programs for the MCP!

[February 2011.]

Below, note the bottles of blue & green energy for thirsty video warriors, bowls of red vs blue computer chips, and, um, data-salsa. Yeah, hot mexi-data-salsa.

[Melisszler Vs Gwyeniflynn. July 2013.
Due to Grid wavelengths being outside of the visual 3700-7000 angstrom range, this photo's blurry. Also, Sark Lives! {somewhere in this shot}]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

all too NinPotent.

Eric's being a geeky sassypants, telling me he just bought that chic pinstripe sterling silver card case ... for cards he hasn't even made yet. "But they're going to say 'Eric Issac-Basset, Stupidity Prevention Consultant."



Jim Wise walks in, red in the face from too much driving in the 100+ degrees to and from Mount Graham Observatory to work on telescopic mirrors as an optical engineer. Always gives me grief for wearing the black low-top split-toe tabi shoes. ("I need them to climb castle walls 'cause I'm shinobi like that.") A few months ago, Jim almost got into a fight with two skate punks in the parking lot, one of whom slapped his car with his deck while he was stopped at an intersection. Those pimply faced punks were lucky Jim decided otherwise. 



Why? Jim's a freaking ninja.



Back in 1990 he was cast as a Foot Clan soldier in the first live-action TMNT. But it's not Hollywood that gave him his Ninja status -- it's the decade and a half of training before that in the arduous and deadly art of Ninjitsu that qualified him to be an adversary to guys in green foam rubber turtle costumes. And to give me grief over shoes I've got no business wearing.



Yet I've unwisely decided to get his attention by saying, "Eric, Jim there needs you as a consultant."



But red-faced Jim's actually in no mood to trifle. Stepping towards me behind the front desk, he replies, "Here, I brought you something."



His arm flicks down, and *click*, the blade flips out of the quicksnap folding knife he's got cradled in his hand. All the action's happening just below the counter so if the blade comes up under my ribcage he'd probably have enough time to nonchalantly walk away before I collapsed in a pool of my own organs.



Unthinking in no-thought, I sweep my left hand down to block his rising wrist, while my right thrusts palm out to connect with his chest. Well almost, as he steps back, half surprised. But not as surprised as I was, because I've no idea where those moves came from.



"Hey! That's really good. You've earned your ninja badge."



Today, I am Ninja!

[And this is the secret badge I'm waiting for, all the way from Koga, exclusively handwoven and delivered by a fivesome of hot Kunoichi. Well, not really. But Jim is bringing me something like this.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

no longer missing.

My worthless elementary art teacher comes into the store. Miss Abrams. Young angry hippie woman flailing about irrelevantly at my inner city school to make a difference, now a week away from retirement. Bitter, judgmental, dressed like all the rest of the 1960s burnouts. We exchange neutral and practiced empty pleasantries. I ask the important question: "Whatever became of Mr. Martinez?"



"He died of AIDS."



I reel inside. My favourite teacher is dead.



Unexpectedly, she follows up, "He was such false man."

As though her surviving by pure chance into retirement somehow made her superior.



"I loved him dearly," I replied flatly. "He did have a roommate Chris that he used to speak of quite a bit." He spoke of the death of Chris' mom to teach us in a heart-rendingly personal confession about loss. This conversation didn't seem like it was going to match that. "Maybe they were more than friends."



"All that time with Lily, the third grade teacher. It was a scandal. And what with all the machismo back then, the men on staff got all the love from Conrado, the principal, and it was such a boys' club. You know, a few years later, Ramon didn't even take his class into art anymore. He said it wasn't important, they didn't need it, and Conrado said that was just fine."



Ah, so that's what it was about. Of course this was the "art teacher" who declared "There's no wrong way to do art" and proceeds to unnecessarily modify the aesthetics of what you're trying to create. Fucking hypocrite. Maybe Ramon figured that out, too.



"To the contrary, I remember he actually touted art. He even won an award in college for a little sculpture called 'Medulla'."

Judy Abrams seemed to think for a second before partially backpedalling, "Well, I didn't know him that well. He was good in the beginning, before all the politics."



The justice here is that even if Ramon was fabulous enough to be incidentally gay, at least he will never be eulogized for having a paintbrush stuck up her useless ass.



And who was Ramon Martinez? The man I knew was a young firebrand who was a Chicano in the best sense of the word. A responsible, divorced single-father who drove a white convertible MG. He took care of himself, ate a tablespoonful of honey every morning for health. Honest enough to fail the student teacher Benny who didn't know fractions any better than we did. Ramon would speak first with joy about his mother, then with frankness about her loss which happened that very same year, having to be strong to come back to the chalkboard. So audacious as to teach us about Juan Diego & the Virgen de Guadalupe in a public school, the Mexicano hero-martyr Jesus Garcia who saved Nacozari from a burning trainload of dynamite, required a verbatim recitation MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech and the hope that it encapsulated. With science, it was astronomy's Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, nuclear power generators and bombs, brought a practicing neurologist in with an actual human brain on a tray and gave us gloves so we could touch the curves and crannies in the gray matter, even the mind-bending ideas of the big bang and oscillating cosmologies. The curriculum pulled no punches, raised questions, made us not only learn but want to think. So ambitious his classroom made front page above the fold of the metro section with its presentations on race and classroom philosophies. The passion and conviction in his teaching was palpable, and equally effective.



I last ran into Ramon around 1991 and we talked for about 45 minutes straight. He'd changed his name after some ancestral research and said he was working on drafting educational software to teach children about Mesoamerica. I'd always meant to follow up with him after that chance meeting, but getting my double degree and other personal involvements took the intention off my radar, regrettably. It seems the only thing I can do now is ask people who knew him to fill in the blanks for me. But what I learned from him and remember of Ramon Martinez, an enlightened man and teacher, I will never forget. Thanks for everything, Mr Martinez.

[Sartorially suited Ramon Martinez in the left foreground. Third from the right, lil' young me sporting the "Pak Rat" shirt at the height of videogame arcade culture.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.