Starstruck and Its Role in My Salvation

I just finished reading Michael Kaluta’s wonderful introduction to The Lost Art of Heinrich Kley. It’s called “Heinrich Kley and His Role in My Salvation”.

This piece is, at the risk of plagiarism (please to call it “homage”) is: “Starstruck and Its Role in My Salvation“.

I was lucky to meet Michael Kaluta before I was introduced to Starstruck.  Twice in fact.
The first time was at the apartment of artist David Mattingly in the long shadows of the World Trade Center. I had been working for a painter in New Jersey, and the occasion was one of the City’s monthly gatherings of those artists of the fantastic. I’d never been to the City before, much less to a party of real artists! I liked Michael and Charles Vess (his then-apartment-mate) on sight, but I would not get to know them for a couple years.

The second meeting was much more surprising as it was nowhere near New York – it was in a run-down building in a slightly seedy neighborhood north of the FBI building in downtown DC. Broadcast Arts was the name of the company, and it had been making quiet inroads into pop culture and media for some years (it would shortly thereafter move to New York later to become famous for its brilliant work on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse). It was close to my own modest digs in Arlington and, as I would shortly learn, a simple subway ride from Kaluta’s homestead in that same suburb. He had come to town to be the lead artist on DJ Webster’s video for the Alan Parsons Project’s million-selling smash hit “Don’t Answer Me“.

Here’s one of our first collaborations – Michael’s pencils and my inks for the heavy’s car in the video:

And here’s our hero and heroine – Nick and Sugar:

I was out of my depth, but that didn’t seem to bother Michael. He was filled with colorful tales, mad talent, and issues of The Shadow #1 he’d drawn (I have mine near to hand even now). Our small but daring cohort finished the video in a couple weeks, and I didn’t see Michael again until I next visited the City.

By that time I had seen Starstruck. Specifically, Marvel Graphic Novel #13. I mention this to suggest the naivete of numbering Graphic Novels, and because Starstruck has assumed more forms than most shapeshifters in comic history – from play, to flashback mini-comics, to radio play, to…. Well, it’s complicated. (For more details, I recommend this Chronology.)

Starstruck was like nothing I’d seen (and I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe…).
Weirdly, it may still be ahead of its time.

A month later, the generous Jim Edwards-Hewitt, gifted me with the first issue of the Epic miniseries that followed the events of the Graphic Novel. Upon reading it, I sent Michael a note offering my assistance should it be desired. Happily for me, that note (and its poorly drawn portrait of Brucilla “the Muscle”) is lost to history. Sadly, Starstruck lasted a mere 6 issues at Epic, and by the time my note reached him, Michael and Elaine were bidding it a sad farewell. But not before they’d given Harry Palmer his own major storyline – with pieces that presaged some of the reality we now live in (Google goggles anyone?):

I met writer Elaine Lee about that time. She’d been a successful actress and off-Broadway playwright. Smart, pretty, and still possessed of a Southern accent that in no way diminished her obvious braininess.

She was also pregnant – VERY pregnant. She was a wee slip of a thing, and her unborn child? A behemoth waiting to be born. Suffice it to say, she made an impression.  I, in my turn, also made an impression. Because even 4 years into my professional “career”, I looked all of 14 years old. No, really.

Here’s the tape case I made for the audio recording of her play The Contamination of the Kokomo Lounge:

And here’s the card I made for Elaine shortly thereafter. It’s as filled with joyous Starstruckery as I could manage:

Her son Brennan is now an adult with mad skills and a resume to match. Like his mother, he is an actor and a writer. His web comic is Strong Female Protagonist and he is a member of the Upright Citizen’s Brigade. And I, in the meantime, have managed to add the appearance (if not the maturity) of at least a couple decades.

It was my honor to work with Michael on assorted gigs through the 80s and 90s (The Abyss adaptation for Dark Horse, a couple SF covers for Byron Priess, et al.) even as I was visiting the City to engage in my long-running habit of dating NYU girls. (I sometimes suspect that Michael put up with my boisterous self because my coterie improved the scenery.) Happily, I got to spend time with Charlie, Elaine, Augusta and others during these pleasurable jaunts. Such a blessing for a young and untrained artist!

By the time Elaine and Michael were given a chance to revisit Starstruck in 1990, they had sufficient faith in my knowledge and passion for their project to entrust the “About Last Issue” blurbs to me. But rather than continuing the tale forward in time and space, they did something far more interesting: they expanded the story – literally adding frames, words and sometimes whole sequences, between the originals. This was reading between the lines in a very real sense! And I relished the opportunity to see the story unfold, to try and ferret out the details and relationships that each unreliable narrator were showing, telling, hiding or lying about. It was a joy! But short lived.

This time it was Michael’s workload that shut things down, not publisher Dark Horse. And so, many pages of Elaine’s expanded and continued story went unread. Oh sure, I had some of Michael’s xeroxed pencils from the unpublished Issue 5, but that was hardly sufficient….

Little did I suspect that Starstruck would be my entree to anything so strange as a career in games…. but by 1990 my interest in roleplaying games had come a long way. What had started with D&D and Boot Hill, had grown through Call of Cthulhu and culminated in a decade of running Lawyers, Guns and Money. And table-top divertissement (no matter how involving or therapeutic) didn’t tell the whole story -  I had stumbled into the early live role-playing games that have come to be called LARPs.

I ran (and helped run) a few of these myself. One of these was notable because it involved Starstruck characters, and was staged down the block from Michael’s boyhood home. Elaine was invited to reprise her stage role of Galatia 9, but sadly money did not allow. The players were remarkable, and many things that could never occur in the real series happened with aplomb – The Bajar Shilling was revalued when Ronnie Lee Ellis married Dwannyun (or was it “Dumb-Onion”?) Grivaar, and the Girl Guides made out like… well, Girl Guides. Norris Rex created a new art form of “running real fast”, and Krystals were used to render the veil of the time/space continuum by none other than the displaced Hong Kong Cavaliers.

Here’s the cover I made for the game book – using what was (in 1986) the very latest in computer graphics: MacPaint. “If only computers would advance to a point where they were more useful than an Etch-a-Sketch! Oh, what I would do then!”

Here’s one of the labels I made for the hooch on the Vale of Tiers:

Then, early one morning, I got a call from Lawrence Schick (a dab hand in gaming and someone I knew from LARPs). It was 9 am and I had, as was my habit, hit the silk not 3 hours earlier. But he wasn’t calling to ask me about games, he was calling to ask if I was the same Lee Moyer who had been writing introductions to Starstruck. Even in my sleep deprived condition, that was a question I could answer.

I went to work on a project for Lawrence’s employers Magnet Interactive called Bluestar. And while that grotesquery was no Starstruck, I produced sufficient examples of Erotica Ann’s costume to put the kibosh on those outfits that Bluestar’s designers had in mind for the macho captain’s female underlings. Most every trace of this Gods-awful abomination has been eliminated from the internet, but for all that it was, in the words of our colleague Paul Murphy “The Worst thing EVER” it made a huge difference in my life – introducing me to people who are still friends, allowing me to work with my dear friends Keith Baker and Heather Lam.

Keith and I would work on all manner of game projects over the next decades, and I have hopes for the new year. But who can know?

When Lawrence went to AOL (It was a big deal then people. No, really), Keith, Heather and I were all involved in a Massively Multiplayer Starstruck pitch to AOL:

This proved a labor-intensive dead end, but it brought Elaine to my abode Arlington where I got to spend time with her and get to know her much better.

Many years passed and after I’d helped start a game company and been in-house as an Art Director for Electronic Arts, I found myself in Portland, Oregon.

During a particularly disagreeable freelance gig with one major corporation or another, it occurred to me that I’d really rather work with people of Integrity. So I asked Michael to send me out some of the black and white pages he’d created for the Dark Horse run and that had never been painted. His choices were… ambitious. This page’s Beastie WPA mural being only one example. Later, of course, we’d add a panel and dialog, but one piece at a time…:

The results were strong enough that Michael sent them out to his nearest and dearest. And that’s how I got the nod from Dave Stevens to paint his drawing of Spiderman (I had no idea that Dave was dying at the time, but it was an honor to work with him). One thing leads to another, but what that other will be is seldom obvious:

Several years on, I got THE CALL.

Starstruck was on – this time, from IDW. Michael would be making the pages 17% taller (sometimes by adding new panels, sometimes by adding extra height to existing panels) and I would be painting the lot.

Here is the cover for Issue 1 as it developed:

Having tried to buy Starstruck art from him for years, you could have knocked me over with a feather when Michael gave me the ink piece you see top center!

Here’s the cover to Issue 8. Michael’s grasp of war machinery, detail, and spacial relations is non-pariel (and somewhat tricky to paint!):

Here are a few panels from among the thousand or so Befores and Afters:

One of the unexpected aspects of this remastered expansion of the expanded tale was the need to relocate word balloons and caption boxes (like those in the Baron’s “throne” room above), as well as create new word balloons and sound effects. There was no budget for Todd Klein or John Workman to reprise their work, so it was my bailiwick (see: out of my depth, above). If there is any better lesson in type placement and flow, in TYPE generally, I’ve certainly never encountered it. In a few cases (like the one below) I had to turn to local expert (and legendary X-Men letterer) Tom Orzechowski for the most elegant and subtle solution:

But other times, the answers spoke for themselves (much like the garrulous Brucilla) and the resultant cascade of verbiage flowed between panels. Hey kids! See how many changes you can spot – even after Michael made the panel taller!

Sometimes I spent days working on important, if intentionally incomplete, UI. (See: Mary Medea and Ambrosia Vitrona Khrome, below):

And when that first HUGE 1/3 of the total Starstruck experience was collected by IDW, there were… gaps. {Gasp!}

Places where the story’s double-page art spreads needed to be properly set up and where the narrative (never seen in a single volume before) wanted reminders and costume changes.

In one case, it was all about conversing with Elaine and stealing from Michael (left), and in another, I had the honor of painting and lettering an all-new spread from Michael with all-new words from Elaine (right):

It took a very long day to paint this next page, and half that time was in making the background and the type work. By making the adjustments I did, it became possible to open up the Shakespeare quote (upper right), and more importantly, to include the object of greatest interest to the scheming parties involved: that anomaly of the Neutral Zone, the Mirror (in the lower right of the background panel). The change to Ronnie Lee’s monitor (upper left) is based on a set that Michael used later. Broadening her shoulder also seemed a good idea:

All of which brings me to Starstruck Today.
Because there is a Starstruck today!

Thanks to the miracle of Kickstarter, Starstruck is coming back.

And while I made the hard decision to leave the painting of my favorite story (to date) in the hands of some other lucky painter, I am lending my experience with Kickstarter and doing what any fan of the series will be doing: backing it. And in my case, backing it at a high level – there’s simply no way I’ll be missing the chance to get Michael to draw me a Starstruck scene he’s never (to my knowledge anyway) even attempted. Who knows what it will look like in the end? Is it wrong for me to hope for another WPA Mural? Turnabout is fair play after all. 

One of my prized possessions for the past 2 decades has been the poster for the original run of the play. It’s hung on the walls of many different homes, and now graces my den. But cooler still is the gun that Michael, Charlie, and company made for Kalif Bajar in the original stage play. It lives in my wunderkabinett – with the aluminum Cootie, Danger Mouse, Tsunami Bear, the Maltese Falcon, Felix the Cat and other dear friends.

How excited am I for this Kickstarter? Excited enough that I have donated Kalif’s pistol as a backer reward!:

It is more important to me to have Harry Palmer’s story, with all it’s grit, hilarity, and heartbreak finally told properly. I painted the cover of the book (below), some pieces for the Kickstarter, as well as some Kickstarter exclusives (go check them out here!).

Harry’s story is my favorite. And I hope it will be yours as well!

And it’s not just me that’s hoping for the best. Check out the words of Geof Darrow and Rick Berry in the Kickstarter film. Or check out the first big IDW compendium and read Mike Carey‘s thoughts therein.

R E S P E C T

Like many of my predecessors of the past century, I use models for all of my paintings with human figures and, in all but a few cases, I direct the photo shoots to get the exact reference I need to paint from. And most of you reading this will be aware of my Pin-Up Calendar and some of the good it’s done for charity. I suspect that’s why I was contacted last week by Jim Hines about my thoughts on the topic of sexism in SF/F. I have been following Jim Hines’s projects with interest, amusement, and a bit of an editorial chagrin. (Really Jim, you want some other kind of cover for the book Esther Friesner intended to call “Fangs for the Mammaries”?)

PART 1: THE INTERVIEW

Jim Hines: “Do you believe sexism is an issue in SF/F art, and why or why not?”

Yes. Just as I believe racism, classism, and perhaps most dangerous of all, capitalism are.

Why is it an issue? Because people in the SF/F field are leaders, not followers. All of these isms are pieces of the human condition – the very area that our field claims to excel in exploring. All of them need to be dealt with. There are enough clever and sensitive people in our field and we need to be paying attention to and caring about these issues. Who else would think of having an award named after James Tiptree Jr.?

Jim Hines: “If so, where do you believe that problem comes from?”

It clearly comes from society. To paraphrase Madge in the old Palmolive commercials: “We’re soaking in it.”

It comes from fearful publishers and advertisers who know that “sex sells” in a country where “Prurient” and “Puritan” are all-too-often synonymous.

It comes from a culture that has become increasingly… disembodied, where the life of the mind is out of sync with the life of the body.

Sex is powerful, and sexism is a clear and present danger.

Jim Hines: “What’s the difference between painting a beautiful, sexy woman (or man) and objectifying them?”

This is perhaps a more difficult question than you intend. In my experience, the intent of the artist matters very little. Objectifying is, like beauty itself, in the eye of the beholder.
Robin Hobb, a participating author in my 2013 pin-up calendar, said it wonderfully:

“Lovely, scantily clad humans are sex objects only to people who objectify other human beings. And those people do that no matter how draped that person might be. In 1967, a Jesuit priest observed to our class that he really did not see the sense of a dress code, as an immodest girl cannot be made modest no matter how you drape her, and that a modest woman can be stripped of her garments but not her modesty. So there it is, for me. If you are looking at our calendar and seeing sex objects instead of fascinating characters, well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And so are sex objects.”

I cannot speak for other illustrators. But for myself, the goal is always to paint the person first. To paint women as persons in their own rights is key, as opposed to painting women for the male gaze. In the case of my calendar, I consider most all of the characters portrayed therein hero shots of a sort. And if they’re not raising swords or aiming guns, that may give you a notion of what I personally find heroic.

There are a few pin-ups in this year’s rank who have not been well-received. When I have read the comments thereon, I am struck to the extent to which I perceive slut shaming.

“Thanks for the assumption that a girl in a miniskirt must be slutty [...] Why is my cover getting slut-shamed by someone who doesn’t know the girl in that picture, doesn’t know who she is or why that image is an accurate one? It’s like the art is awesome as long as it’s on a closet door, but if you’re asked to like it in public, it’s time to throw out a few micro-aggressions to keep people from thinking you’re ‘that kind’ of person.” – Seanan McGuire writing about Aly Fell‘s cover for her book Discount Armageddon.

As a cover artist, Aly Fell’s job, like mine, is to create an interesting or exciting visual narrative to promote the book, the product. I want to catch the eye, to engage the potential reader, and the more I can honestly reflect the author’s characters and intent, the better.

As a viewer, what narrative have you constructed in your head that tells you that a girl in a miniskirt is a slut or a surprised girl in lingerie is a bimbo?

Jim Hines: “What do you think we should do (if anything) to try to move past the modern-day trend of awkwardly posed, semi-clad heroines on book covers?”

Before I get into what I think is the real heart of your question, I want to speak on the importance of negative space and silhouette on the efficacy of a painting. While we see far fewer examples of pure silhouette than we did in the glory days of Leyendecker and Rockwell, the shapes of the figure and the shapes cut from the background by the figure are one of the most useful tools to an illustrator looking to create dynamism. (It should come as no surprise that the great Charles Dana Gibson was a child prodigy at cutting paper silhouettes years before he would probably look twice at a “Gibson Girl.”) Why are most models so tall and thin? It’s all about how dynamic a taller figure can be made to read. There’s a reason Jim Hines and I (playing the “average” person below) are not models:

There are many figures on book covers that are awkward at best and hideously malformed at worst (the tumblr site EscherGirls speaks to this at length). Sometimes that is the fault of an artist lacking skill or reaching too far for an interesting silhouette. Often however, the artists pull it off with nary a thought from the viewer as to the character being “wrong”. As I did my research about pin-ups I discovered something that surprised me: Pin-ups I’d seen for years were hiding something in plain site. Here’s a fun position you can assume in the comfort of your own home… if you happen to have between 3-5 extra vertebra that is:

As to the scantily clad heroines, I dare say there is a time and place. This is a truth well recognized by today’s brilliant crop of art directors. Whether Irene Gallo at TOR or Lou Anders at Pyr, our field is being led by the best, and in this I believe that our field is now largely the exception to the rule. Sci-fi and fantasy create beautiful, often inspiring covers. We have a readership and creators that are aware and active in the discussion of sexism (and the additional isms.)

What can be done to make our covers better?

1. Understand that there is a problem; be conscious of the pitfalls of the combination commerce, text and images
2. Call atrocious work out when and wherever we see it, granting weight to all the parties involved (see Part 2, below)
3. Reward good work that shows our ideals in action
4. Continue this conversation, ideally in the context of all those other isms.
5. And painters? Don’t paint slavishly to the white male gaze, ok?

PART 2: EXAMPLES FROM COMICS AND GAMES

So, having spoken about SF/F covers, let’s look….ahem…briefly at a couple related fields that are nowhere near as circumspect.

I feel lucky that I don’t have to defend DC Comics’ (Warner Brothers’) decision to bring Power Girl’s costume back even as their arch nemesis Marvel (Disney) does the right thing by making Ms. Marvel into Captain Marvel at last:

>Shudder< I have it on good authority that the brilliant editor at Lucasfilm would never allow this on her watch:

This is the entire range of playable characters. Oy:

And this game “sizzle” art was brought to my attention by the splendid NK Jemisin:

“It’s more than just the ridiculous butt-shots of the women in this image, complete with translucent boy shorts. It’s the contempt and humiliation in the way this is arranged — contempt on the part of Dante, a character who until lately has treated the women around him like people and not props; and humiliation on the part of the women. They’re groveling at his feet, clinging to him slavishly, even as he pantomimes shooting one of them in the face with his oh-so-phallic finger. Because women getting shot by their sexual partners is soooo hot and edgy, don’tcha know.” – NK Jemisin discussing the horror seen above.

The first time I saw this poster the only thing I could say was “Oh f&©# no.” This is a cover so deeply horrific that it can’t be fixed. Why even bother to comment that there are no women of color among the angels for example? Or ask why angels are wearing clingy Flash Gordon panties? Making any small changes to this horror show would be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The fact that the painter seems quite adept at painting somehow makes the piece all the worse.

PART 3: OTHER, MORE FULSOME RESPONSES

The day after I sent my response to Jim, Arnie Fenner posted a typically thoughtful response to Jim’s projects on the Muddy Colors blog. He raised many excellent questions. Among them: are artists are being made the scapegoat for sexism, omitting any mention of the the industry, the art directors, and indeed the authors themselves? He received excellent responses, but my favorite is from a former ad man whose well-intentioned mistake led deep into the heart of how our isms are intertwined:

Gilead – March 13, 2013 at 8:02 PM

In my advertising days I once did an ad for a weight loss product. It had two cartoons showing the same guy as a before and after. On the left is a fat, stupid-looking guy busting the bathroom scale. In the middle is the product and on the right is the same guy looking robust, slender and somehow smarter. Are you picturing it? It’s kind of cute right? Kind of funny and gets the point across.
Now picture it again only this time, instead of a man, it’s a fat, stupid-looking woman. Or a black guy. Or an Asian. Whoa! All of a sudden that’s not funny. Now it’s like “What are trying to say here mister?”
I’d had this naïve idea that I could do some good by being all egalitarian. If the product was non gender-specific or race-specific I could mix it up and give everyone equal representation. It turned out that was a really bad idea and I got into all kinds of trouble. I learned that, in most people’s perception, a picture of a white male is a picture of a person – just a person. It could represent anyone: male or female, old or young, black or white. But a picture of a black person somehow represents blacks exclusively, and a picture of a woman somehow represents women exclusively.
If you draw a man you make a picture, but if you draw a woman you make a statement.
This is a cultural thing and it is probably fading away as we speak, but for now it still seems to be true. Which is why a picture of Conan can be accepted at face value as what the character looks like and what he wears, but a picture of a scantily dressed woman is seen not as a depiction of a character, but as a statement about women.
So I have no solutions I’m just trying to show a less obvious reason for the problem. When we look at a painting of a man and a woman we don’t see an every-man and an every-woman; we see a man and Women.

I am glad that so many people in our field care about these issues and I hope that this continues to be a deep and thoughtful discussion among artists, authors, publishers, and readers. Not just in the F/SF field, but in comics, games and everywhere else in the media landscape.

2012: Art Year in Review

2013 took off like a rocket with work and adventures (and a flu that allows me a moment to look back on the wide variety of work I did in 2012). As Rod Serling might have intoned, “Submitted for your approval, the work of one Lee Moyer hanging here, in the Twilight Zone.”

The largest grouping of pieces is of course my calendar. It’s my favorite project ever! Not just because of the work, but because of the amazing writers I got to work with and the fact that it raised tens of thousands of dollars for charity (it’s also eligible for the Best Related Work Hugo award. Just sayin’.

2013 ‘Check These Out’ Fantasy Literary Pin-up Calendar

Covers:

A Red Sun Also Rises and The Warlock’s Curse

Also check out my journal entry on the making-of A Red Sun Also Rises and my essay on Mary Hobson’s previous covers, wherein I try to understand why the first worked and the second failed.

A Stark and Wormy Knight and Confessions of a Five Chambered Heart

Axe Cop

Honey West: Murder on Mars!

Shadowrun: Jet Set

Unpublished color work:

I spent a lot of time last year working on 13th Age. The game is still in it’s final stages of pre-print and will be published late spring:

The pieces below are from Aaron with my art direction and occasional emendations:

The book is the work of noted game designers Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet with me and illustrator Aaron McConnell. Even as this first book goes to press, work on the art for the expansion, 13 True Ways is already underway. It will include maps like the one below:

Misc. Fun Projects:

2012 marked the end of Dan Garrison and Zephy McKanna’s remarkable Exalted game. This set of Exalted trumps were a collaboration with Felicity Shoulders and Sarah Barker, and served as a tribute to Dan and Zephy’s work:

This year also marked yet another successful Ambercon NW ( portraying that young chowderhead Bertie Wooster is always a delight) and another Ambercon t-shirt design (this, the first to work on a tie-dyed shirt):

Working for Wizards of the Coast is always interesting. One never knows quite where work done for a book will appear. In this case, on large exhibit-screening banners at PAX.

My yearly posters for Lakewood and NorthWest Children’s Theater 2012-2013 seasons:

This is the design for a spinnaker, recently seen intimidating the other racers around the San Francisco bay:

This surprise book cover from Readercon 2012 is a collaboration with authors Michael Swanwick, and Elizabeth Bear, and photographer Kyle Cassidy (and audience members like Bracken, Tom and Venetia):

A just-for-fun Christmas Dalek to wish all my friends happy holidays. Rumor has it that a couple crew members of BBC America put it to good use. And this Circus Shoggoth hails from last year’s Pickman’s Apprentice competition. The masterminds at Sigh Co. are already Kickstarting the HP Lovecraft Film Festival.

Sometimes I get surprisingly interesting commissions quite out of the blue. This time I was asked to draw a series of rare antique telephones:

This year I was asked to do my first piece of art for the McMenamin brothers for the new wing of their splendid Kennedy School. At any other time I’d have been happy to paint from The Two Towers, The Wizard of Earthsea, or 100 Years of Solitude. But the opportunity to honor my father who died last summer in a painting from Sometimes a Great Notion was too much to resist. Elmer Moyer is the man in the middle:

Another Kickstarter I worked on was for the logo for Broken Continent:

And finally, some random memes for 2012:

There are of course still more projects I worked on in 2012 that have yet to be revealed by my clients. I hope to share them as they are revealed in 2013.

“To summarize the summary of the summary”

What a long strange trip it’s been. Many things were learned along the way ~ and I’m sure that I won’t come close to summing them up satisfactorily ~ but here goes:

GENERAL TOURIST STUFF

Splitting food with a friend saves huge amounts of $. We spent approximately $23 per day on food for 2 and ate very well. Sometimes that was due to friendly hosts, but most often we were on our own.

Breakfast is best in one’s hotel room. We eat granola and yogurt at home. And that’s what we ate on the road (with Muesli sometimes subbing for granola). Often in hotel room glasses.

If one is like me, one never knows when a 7 mile walk through Sydney will happen. Stay hydrated and fed (we bought cashews and dried apricots for carrying).

A few zip-lock bags are indispensable. Ideal for breaking down larger quantities of snack food. For keeping things separated. In case a long coach trip unsettles your stomach….

As Miko reminds me from time to time: Credit cards can make up for most anything you forget.

An unlocked iPhone is useful but apparently difficult to get. Mine was long out of contract and popping a $20 SIM card in meant instant directions and restaurant searching on the go. On the other hand, Facebook and email are ubiquitous….

New Zealand has great radio stations. A LOT of great radio stations.

We packed 3 small bags and one overhead luggage sized bag. For 3 weeks. Traveling light is a blessing. And, judging by the heaps of luggage we spied all around us at hotels and airports, rare.

Ice cream, gelato, sorbet, et al. is almost always cheaper in a 2-scoop cone. So if you keep a cup to hand, you can readily separate flavors and each have an ice cream. Ice creameries are wise to this however, and may charge you for a cup.

Travel agents live and breathe this stuff. And a good one will know the best-positioned and least-expensive choice. Often this means older hotels that have gotten upgrades – sometimes in the form of awkward architectural fig-leafs and other times, full on avant-garde refittings. As in all matters of real estate, the 3 keys are location, location, location.

Talk to the locals. Sure, some of them are sick of tourists and all they represent, but there are wonderful people everywhere. And how will you learn about them unless you interact with them?

Do the touristy stuff. I usually like to find the sly side alleys and subtle wonders, but there’s simply no time. In our case we didn’t even have time to read the guide we grabbed in the airport – there’s simply too much to do and too little time. So, plan. Trust a good agent. And, perhaps most surprising to my cheap penny-pinching self….Let yourself be upsold sometimes. Since we were not likely to get back to the Antipodes any time soon, I got upsold twice – a small plane out of Milford Sound and a Helicopter up from the Great Barrier Reef. Thank heavens I was.

Some Random Observations about Australia and New Zealand

Expensive (even with a strong dollar in NZ). Want to grab a Snickers bar? Got $2.60?

All this driving on the other side of the road is fine. But the fact that cars have the right of way in almost all circumstances (barring a few well marked crosswalks, and even then…) less so. Windshield wipers where the turn signals should be? Dangerous. Not knowing which side of a sidewalk or hall? Suboptimal. Forever going to the wrong escalator? Just embarrassing. But then not switching the side of the steering column where you put the key? Silly.

Roundabouts are wonderful. Really wonderful. Not only do they keep traffic flowing well, they prevented me from making some awkward right turns. Love them.

Dark chocolate? Not to my taste. Let’s just say they excel at making “Dairy Bars” and move on.

Great yogurt and eggs. And Licorice.

All the kangaroo and lamb I expected? The cheap wool that sheep-sheering nations must have? Not so much. By contrast, they farm deer in NZ, and sell the antlers to the Chinese for crazy sums.

NZ is a country that loves thrills. Hard to believe that Zorbing doesn’t happen in Oregon, but overzealous American lawyers might be the reason.

There is both no tipping and good service here. If tipping is supposed to encourage better service, it simply doesn’t work. Not in Portland anyway. Instead I get a very strong feeling that tipping is simply an excuse to hide costs to the consumer (like we hide taxes), and acts as a subsidy to the restaurant industry.

These countries don’t have a gun problem. They just don’t. And all the arguments I’ve heard for our grotesque body counts, revolutionary impulses, and exceptionalist hobbyism are just silly.

Traveling to distant colonial lands made me feel terribly aware of my own country’s savage history. But it also made me more appreciative of the glories of where I live. Portland is wonderful and I am pleased to be home.

Index of Travel:

Prologue to Adventure!
Day 1 & 2 in North Island, New Zealand
Days 3, 4 & 5 North Island, New Zealand
At Sixes and Sevens
Day 8 & 9: Viva la Wellington!
Putting the Zed in NZ
Wild Life in Australia
NSW NSFW
More Fun (The Abridged Version)
Day 19 & 20 Welcome to the Jungle
Day 21: The Big Rock Finish
Day 22 & 23

Day 22 & 23

Day 22: A New Year

We awoke with a text from Jessica R, and eventually set off to meet her at noon by the lagoon for lunch. But en route we discovered something surprising. In avoiding the appalling high levels of ultraviolet and it’s attendant risk of skin damage that are a given down under on most days, we popped into an open door and the cool of a mall. And in the mall, came upon Elizabeth Barden, the most fantastic (and educational) salesman in the greatest clothing shop the Venetia has yet found. So many and splendid were the clothing options that we headed out for lunch without buying a thing, but promising to return.

We had a great lunch with Jessica – discussing everything from travels to politics to the C of E and Eddie (Executive-Transvestite-And-Serial-Marathoner-Deserves-A-Knighthood) Izzard.A little later we were to encounter one of Izzard’s routines in real life:

We were delighted that she could use the balance of the phone SIM card we’d bought in Melbourne only a week earlier, but were a little sad not to be able to phone her amid the festivities later because she had “my” phone. We hope to visit with her again when we head to England later this year.

   The return to shopping was… Epic. And curiously time consuming. Apparently when one is a petite (or “VS”, or “very small”) person of a certain shape, finding properly fitted clothing can be very difficult. Who knew? But once that mother lode was struck, there was really no turning away. I suspect she will be all too happy to show off the new togs upon our return. And really, it’s all good reference….

After the well-earned (or would “well-spent” be more apt?) nap that followed, and as the final flying foxes races across the sky, we ventured forth into the twilight in search of a meal. But instead of the otherwise quiet street with the cacophony of parrots where we’d tried competing Indian restaurants on the previous nights, we turned down the street that had once, back at the city’s founding, been Chinatown.

There, much to our surprise, we encountered an inflatable Dragon Arch and a street festival celebrating the Chinese New Year. We paused to watch a couple dance to an all lost familiar tune, dueling English and Chinese speaking announcers, and an Indonesian troop on the makeshift stage. But it wasn’t just the Festival of the Snake that was crowded – everything was. Apparently Saturday night in Cairns is a wild time every time! We lacked the requisite reservations for the exotic Ochre (“Sorry loves, can’t get you in until 9″), but after a trip through Fried Food Alley and the spectacle of The Night Market, we found a fine Thai place.

After dinner we headed to the lagoon and looked up at the Southern stars while people thronged about having picnics and wading in the Lagoon. We were looking out toward the reef when a sweet quiet child with a slight speech impediment mentioned fireworks. Intrigued we waited a bit, and watched the exodus from the lagoon when the lifeguards called time. And then, when the sudden rain appeared, we moved back toward our hotel. We’d just about left the promenade park when the first explosion went. We knew it was from Chinatown by the incredible flights of birds rushing away from the site, and so we headed back the way we’d come for a better view. I grew up with masses of DC fireworks (and hope to see them again this year), but the explosion of tropical birds was even more impressive. And the number of waves! Apparently many groups of birds slept calmly through the first barrages, only to come unglued later. After the fireworks, we headed back to the hotel to arrange our new wardrobes for a safe return to the US.

Day 23+: We Come From the Future, or “Once Around the World, James” 

What a day. It all began in Cairns at 7am. But our letters of transit were incorrect, and we waited an extra 40 minutes for our coach accordingly. When it arrived, we hopped on and headed out into the brief morning rain. We had to experience a little rain after all – for otherwise how would we see a full rainbow? And what trip to Oz would be complete without one?

Weird to be visiting New Zealand again, but not stopping for more than an hour’s time.Nice to see the Dwarves guarding the International Arrivals Hall though. Those dragons are everywhere…

And wonderful to see areas we’d visited and knew from the ground ` and to be able to view the scenery as a topographical map with a scale of 1 to 1!

On the 12 hour trip to LAX, we saw an absolutely hallucinogenic sunset. Hard to imagine missing such a magnificent show by sitting on an aisle…. Air New Zealand is wonderful (so was JetStar). It’s almost enough to make me believe that the US is home to the worst national carriers in the civilized world. In addition to the Crowded House album (NZ represent!) i listened to as a dozed, I watched 4 films, from stately to the ridiculous to the more ridiculous: Lincoln, Seven Psychopaths, the Aardman Pirate movie, and Cars. All while Venetia revisited our trip through New Zealand by watching the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (with the added Air N Zed safety film scenes, natch. Though we watched the same safety film thrice, the delight of passengers heretofore unexposed kept it fresh. Something no other such film has ever managed.). Airplane screens being what they are, we were always able to see more than our own screens. I took up Lincoln after the viewer in front of me turned it off when he realized that it was a largely procedural film about legislating. To see poor Boromir shot down during the successful House vote to end slavery was quite surreal. And weird cast and scenic interplay continued all trip long.

The captain woke the passengers for breakfast, ensuring that I’d have a view of the day’s second dawn. That was a first!

Santa Catalina was the tip off that La was near. How amazing that I’d been seated on the correct side of the plane for both New Zealand and Catalina. So much about this trip was lucky!

As I write this, we are trapped in the long layover at LAX – where the lines are not short. Where the airport is squalid. Where the prices and amenities are outrageous. And where the fascism of the optimally-intrusive and appallingly-surly security apparatus has me quietly humming an Orwellian take on Steve Goodman’s “(If Your Life Was On) Video Tape”. Fear – it’s the American Way. And like the now-sacred words “under God” added to our coinage during the Red Scare, this bureaucracy created during the Islamofascist Scare looks to be just as eternal and seems to be getting evermore entrenched. As do an absence of food or even snacks on flights, and all manner of asinine hidden fees. And unless one is lucky enough to travel abroad, such things will ever seem “normal”.

By the time we are home, it will have been 30 hours of travel.
And ALL on the same Sunday.

Addendum: We got to talking in the airport with Chicago’s Jack & Diane, and when they moved our gate, we barely had time to board. No food was taken. Happily, we met the wonderful Bruce Hostetler on the way home. Turns out we have scads of people and taste in common, and that he’d directed the version of The Hobbit I’d done the poster for (yes, it’s Hobbit all the way down). Bruce was returning from a Revels Board Meeting north of LA, and he was kind enough to pass over his banana in self defense.

Speaking of self-defense, there was a fellow in the Portland Airport openly brandishing a submachine gun while he was chewing gum. Clearly he’d come to kick ass and chew gum, but why? Just another ratcheting up of our country’s endearing paranoia….

Day 21: The Big Rock Finish

Just as the clever designers of Travel UI had worked in different ways to ensure proper structure (the trip up the Sydney Harbor Bridge at twilight, the train assent and gondola return of yesterday, the plane return from Milford Fiord after the coach arrival all being fine examples), so I designed the trip as a whole to finish big – and there is nothing bigger or more spectacular than the Great Barrier Reef!

   But this wasn’t a small dive off a small fishing boat in Kona – no, no! This was a massive, almost science-fictional, staged procession to (and from) “Marine World”, a massive tented reef platform hub (one of three within our sightlines). We took a large Catamaran out, and it remained docked throughout, serving as a sort of cabana (with crucial and unduplicated restrooms). The ride was choppy through the channel as the ship dealt with the fierce tidal pull. Given Venetia’s rather… difficult… bus trip to Milford Sound, we deemed it best for her to take the motion-sickness pills as we boarded. The multitude of seasick passengers who later joined us at the back deck suggests that this may have been the wisest decision we made all day.

The trip out was stunning/sick-making, and the platform held plenty of other craft which would be the same. A deep-prowed boat they called a Semi-Submersible allowed us to sit below the waterline and go for a spin about the platform and over nearby reefs. The animatronic owl on the prow amused us greatly.
A small glass-bottomed boat was bobbing next to the emergency Zodiac, a 40 passenger ferry boat and a helipad floated nearby. Apparently there was a “wear a bubble helmet and walk on the bottom of the sea” option, but it was never really clear to us amid the countless other choices.

When we arrived (and after some instructions for our eventual departure), we set out immediately into the nearby (roped-off and lifeguarded) reef area. The snorkeling was stupendous – parades of parrotfish, wrasses, angelfish, all the usual suspects and an extremely gregarious 5′ long Humphead Maori Wrasse called “Wally” who was friendlier than most cats I’ve known, happy to be patted and adored.

But it seems that a proper seal for one’s snorkel is darned tricky when sporting facial hair. And it speaks to the long years since last I snorkeled that this common-sense fact had utterly eluded me.

Happily, the crew were a jolly and helpful lot. After their slightly disbelieving “You mean you’d be willing to just… shave it off?”, I undertook the worst shave ever in a cold water sink in a tiny rocking lavatory with a disposable Bic Shaver – all to make me look more like an Amish Abe Lincoln. But it wasn’t about looks, it was about utility. The mustache will grow back – my time at the reef would not.

A tour in the semi-submersible followed, and while Venetia was in good form, I was feeling a bit green at the gills from our time below.
I ate a tiny bit of the vasty buffet and hung out a little bit in the sun before it was time for the “Adventure Dive”.

It was there that we spoke to the first American we’d seen all day. A fellow Portlander named Heather who works as a Psychiatrist with children at Kaiser.
We hopped in the ferry and headed to the far corner of the big reef were we walked off the side and splashed down – it felt like a kinder version of walking the plank. Immediately, there were large schools of small fish below us – one of several types of local Banana Fish. Then the big schools of bigger fish – Red Bass. Then just a little group of two – Grey Reef Sharks. Later we saw a couple Whitetip Reef Sharks, a young green turtle, a jellyfish (that our guide brought up for our delectation), loads of Spotted Sweetlips, insane posses of Clownfish, incredible Boulder and Brain Corals, and most every kind of Wrasse and Sergeant Major one could imagine. The trip was a little tricky for the tidal swells and the very low tide, but ever so worth the effort. Toward the end (amid a sudden rain shower, and amid my fussing with a recalcitrant mask amid kicking-up waves), it was my great joy to spot a very old and well-camouflaged sea turtle. Everyone in our group got to see the old fella nipping at corals and being quietly fearsome, some 4 meters below us. But Venetia, swimming alone at the back, got to see rather more:

“This day was the ultimate day of wonder and magic. I have always admired Ophelia for the serenity and beauty of her final pose; if only she’d had a snorkel! After our long hour of drifting along the edge of the coral, I wasn’t at all ready to leave. I could have spent hours more out in the ocean but I’d learned that when fins started clumping together, there was always something worth seeing, and I sped up accordingly. He was enormous, at least for a turtle, which is to say he was my size (though undoubtedly weighed a great deal more!). I followed him as he moved along the ocean floor until, much to my amazement, he started to rise up until he was directly beneath me. As he rose toward me, I couldn’t resist and put out a hand to stroke his shell. It was surprisingly soft, not at all rough or slimy but soft like short clean fur. I brushed his back left flipper as well, amazed that he allowed me to get so close. Then I put my head above water at the exact moment he poked his own head out for air. It was extremely brief but the difference in his coloration from underwater was astonishing. Then the spell was broken. I saw Lee waving at me and when I looked back underwater again, the turtle was gone.”

I swam back to watch the encounter (note to self: must start calling Venetia “Dances With Turtles”), but realized we were delaying the party and headed to the dock as swiftly as my blue swim fins would propel me. And when I arrived, I was surprised to hear my name. It seems our tour leader had been asked whether we were on his tour, and he’d said no. This caused alarm among the staff for two reasons. 1. Losing passengers to the briny is bad form and terrible for tourism. 2. We were scheduled to take a helicopter trip back to the mainland, and we cocking up departure times. But miscommunication is everywhere, and in our case it had a cascade effect. I got Venetia to swim in pronto but she didn’t know why. As she was pulling my wetsuit off in haste, I accidentally elbowed her in the face, and as I changed out of my wet swimsuit in the open and hastily donned real clothes without really drying off first (towels were apparently some thing we should have carried from home. Who knew?), Venetia found an actual changing room. I hurried to pay up, sign us out, and get Venetia some ice for her face. Then we met up and raced for the glass-bottomed boat which in turn sped to the helicopter, which then… sat still for several minutes.

I never imagined getting seasick on a helicopter, but the longer it sat in the rain, rocking to and fro, the more that possibility loomed.

Finally, and without fuss, we rose off the platform and up out of the small rainstorm and over the glory of the Great Barrier Reef in the quietest but most dramatic way possible.

We’d never ridden in a helicopter before, but it was thoroughly lovable. Where the tiny plane out of Milford Fiord had seemed to have all the strength and maneuverability of a paper airplane, the helicopter ride seemed like a magic carpet. The young Aussie pilot was great, and our knowledge of the reef (the size of Japan and teeming with life) allowed him to take it easy on the narration.

When I mentioned a blue hole in the reef ahead, he swiveled and dove in its direction, without producing the slightest pang of discomfiture or worry in his passengers (including the 3 non-English speaking Asians in e back seat). I felt a little like Eli Cross on his crooked crane, ascending into the heavens above. A bigger finish I could not have imagined.

PS: Venetia’s face is fine.

 

 

Day 19 & 20: Welcome to the Jungle

  Day 19: Up to Cairns

We arose, packed and checked out before wandering a couple blocks to meet up with Mark Rulewski who we’d last seen by sheer chance in the Chico Hot Springs of Montana last June (see account here).

We enjoyed a lovely and leisurely breakfast at Two Good Eggs, and he walked us to where the car was imprisoned and we parted. Maybe we’ll next see him in Oregon!

The petrol prices by the airport were predictably exploitive and ghastly, but the airport itself was another simple and laid back affair, and when one has nowhere important to be, a 15 minute delay really didn’t matter. As we flew north out of town, we got to see the glory of Sydney stretched out below us – all those crazy fingers of land stretching into the harbor, the tall buildings, the neighborhoods we’d walked through and the bridge we’d just climbed.

Our seat mate for the flight north was an erudite and interesting lady named Jessica R. who, growing up a ginger in the UK, had long admired her namesake Jessica Rabbit. With such good company, the trip passed in a flash. And the views of the coast ( and the frickin’ Great Barrier Reef) as we descended were awe inspiring.

We checked in before checking out an Indian restaurant up the street. After a yummy Hanti Gosht we emerged to a riot of wheeling parrots in prismatic gangs! And then, when they’d calmed a bit, and as we wandered Cairns’ beautiful Lagoon (a mirror-calm pool for soaking that occupies the middle of the town’s sea-front) we spied even larger shapes circling in the sky – Flying Foxes! We only saw a few at first, but later we saw them everywhere filling the twilight sky with their wide swooping silhouettes. Venetia was completely entranced. What a magical surprise!

A delicious banana and Carmel gelato and a short sharp shop for breakfast nosh and it was home to bed.

Day 20: Up the Junction

We arose early, but having travelled the day before and turned in early, we felt no pain in it. We were scooped up by the coach (aka “bus”) and taken on a tour of several other local boarding establishment. It almost incredible to me just how many tourist hotels this small town is made of….

A few tourists were let out at the indigenous peoples’ cultural center, and a couple others at the entrance to the SkyRail, but most continued with us to the Kuranda Scenic Railroad depot in Redlynch. Many men serving under foreman Red Lynch had died building this tropical railroad up to Northeastern Australia’s table lands, and we got to marvel at it while suffering no more than the heat and humidity of a nice summer day in Virginia.

We also marveled at Barron Falls. This massive cataract is an unstoppable force in more typically rainy Monsoon Season, but we were lucky to find it almost dry. Photos don’t really seem to convey its scale, but whoa!

Eventually we got to Kuranda and bid the lovely train adieu. And then we were stuck there for 3 hours. I’ve been in many towns called “tourist traps” – sometimes by the locals, sometimes by visitors. In this case, a local woman overheard the description in the post office and under her breath whispered “some people LIVE here” to me ere she departed in a snit. True, but if I lived at South of the Border or the Mall of America, I’d be the first to admit it was a tourist trap. And without a means of egress, we were literally trapped in this sticky tourist Mecca – truly a luxury problem.Opals were gawked at, Schnitzel happily devoured, clothing admired, used books considered, frozen purees consumed, crashed (for-films) WWII plane inspected, the same aboriginal designs seen on every product and in every context imaginable, and countless shops and stalls visited. When asked why there were so many Germans and Austrians among the shopkeepers, one replied “it’s just too cold in Germany”. Fair enough, but I admit to a moment of wondering whether Ira Levin really had it right about Brazil….

Yes, we’ve seen and done countless touristy things in the last 3 weeks, but today was Tourism writ large. Yes, we visited the post office and the grocery store. Yes, we actually conversed with the natives more than we dickered with them about prices. Yes, we took some great tropical reference photos of plant and animal life (lizards, and brush turkeys and crocodiles – oh my!), but we were really just happy tourists pinned like so many beautiful butterflies.When at last our appointed hour was at hand, we tottered down the hill to the marvelous SkyRail that would in turn take us back down the mountain, in gondola #101 no less (clearly named by George Orwell for maximum irony).

We glided over the jungle canopy and were generally held high above it all. There were occasionally wonderful pairs of grey forest birds sitting on the gondola wire, but there were no other animals that even seemed to notice us, and overall (literally), it seemed a perfect method of travel. With only two isolated stations on the route, it made quite a small footprint….

There was a large female orb-weaving spider in the station where we stopped to see Barron Falls, or, in the proper parlance of the region, Din Din (what a great name for torrential falls). While we enjoyed the comparatively dry weather (I fear the June trip to Virginia and points north will be far worse), it did seem a little sad to see the mighty cataract reduced to a trickle.

As we descended back to the coastal plane, our attention was drawn to the curious waterpark on our left – an odd oval track where people on surfboards jump off ramps, and generally glided around. It took us a long approach to realize that they were being pulled along hanging wires like cable cars. A curious sport, but then I suppose the Barrier Reef limits most of the hard core surfing up here….

We didn’t head out again once we were returned to the hotel. The snacks we’d bought last night stood us in good stead, and while we missed the nightly megabat festival, we enjoyed our napping.

We witnessed no cassowaries, but otherwise we got our jungle money’s worth.