Geek Dojo Master Supreme Excellence of Happy Pop Culture Time Celebrates 40 Years Pineapple Show

Earlier this month, we celebrated Stephen Fitzpatrick’s 40th birthday. Since I’ve known Stephen for over 20 years now, this seems an opportune time to offer tribute.

I’ve known Steve since high school. We met, to the best of my recollection, while serving on Student Council; I was the Grade 10 Representative, and I believe he was the Vice-President…I’m sure Steve will step in to correct me. I liked Stephen right from the start, even though we weren’t much alike on the surface; he was outgoing where I was introspective, he was tall and I was short, he seemed like the least neurotic person I’d ever met, while I felt like I was drowning in teenage angst every moment. Steve was a breath of fresh air.

Stephen Fitzpatrick and Earl J. Woods, back row, right.

Stephen is a very gregarious guy, one of the most fun and fun-loving people I’ve ever met. When Stephen discovers something he loves, he shares it with his friends. And I’ve benefited from that generosity from the beginning. Steve’s impulse to share introduced me to a wide variety of important pop culture touchstones. Steve has long been on the cutting edge of this stuff; without his guidance, I might not have become the geek I am today. Stephen introduced me to...

Moonlighting. It was quite possibly the best television drama/comedy of the 1980s, with terrific writing, inventive direction, and the most engaging leads ever to grace the screen. This was smart TV, and helped me fall in love with the medium.

Crisis on Infinite Earths. I was at that age when I thought that I’d grown too old for comics, but Steve told me that I had to check this out – they’d killed the Flash! And Supergirl! I thought he was nuts – superheroes didn’t die. At the very least, they didn’t stay dead. But Steve drove me up to a comic shop in Edmonton – I don’t recall the name, only that it belonged to a guy named Jim – and I caught up on the Crisis, got hooked on the reimagining of Superman, and collected comics for the next twenty years or so, before I finally realized I was spending more on the hobby than I was paying in rent. My pocketbook may not be too happy with Stephen, but I’m grateful for the endless hours of entertainment.

Science fiction conventions. I knew they existed, but I’d never been to one until Steve drove a group of us down to Con-Version II in Calgary. There’s something very liberating about dressing up like a fool and trading obscure inside jokes while racing from panel discussions to the dealers’ tables to the movie room, all while enduring the befuddled stares of less addled folk. Steve and I even shared a costuming prize one year – he was a Klingon accountant, I was the Starfleet officer tasked to deal with him.

Stephen Fitzpatrick in cosume as...I'm not sure what.

Stephen as a dog soldier, I think, second from left

New tabletop roleplaying games. To wit, the Star Trek RPG (naturally) and Villains & Vigilantes. Villains and Vigilantes was a great game, with a novel conceit: you played yourself, but with super-powers. We had a blast uprooting telephone poles to use as clubs, foiling bank robbers, and surviving nuclear catastrophe.

John Carpenter Movies. Stephen introduced me to John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China – two very different, but equally awesome films. The first is one of the most bleak and chilling SF/horror pictures ever made, while the second is one of my favourite comedies. John Carpenter’s filmography is pretty uneven, but these are masterpieces of the genre, and I’m grateful Steve brought the director to my attention.

So with all that preamble out of the way, let’s enjoy a few pictures of the party. Here’s to your first 40 years, Stephen!

Stephen is sure to enjoy this fine bottle of...cat's piss?

The "Hawaii Four-Oh" theme encouraged loud partying and loud shirts.

Even though fire, alcohol, tools and skipping ropes were all present at the party, Jeff managed not to hurt himself.

Colin, Audrey and Scott look on as Stephen delivers a rousing speech (edited for content and length)

I liked the indoor palm tree, so Stephen was kind enough to take this photo of Sylvia and me.

Pete hammers a coconut, presumably so he can put a lime in it.

Mike sculpts. From the expression on his face, I'm not sure I want to know what horrors he hopes to coax from the clay.

Heather and Jeff, just because it's a nice picture. Except for the branch sticking out of Jeff's head...I'd like to pretend that Jeff merely had another accident, but in this case it's just my bad composition.

Pinnacle of Evolution

Earl J. Woods at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Drumheller; May 31, 1987. Photo by Jeff Crozier.

While looking through photo albums for another project, I found this gem. I'm not sure what I was doing...complaining about the heat, perhaps? This was taken on a school field trip to the Tyrell Museum in Drumheller. Timely, since Friday's Edmonton Journal noted that some creationists are building an alternative, anti-evolution museum in Big Valley. Come to think of it, this image would serve nicely as my reaction shot when I heard the news...

Woods World of Sports: Flowerpot Throw

Earl J. Woods begins his spin for Backyard Games glory. It looks good...

The centripetal forces are shocking - will Woods' body collapse under the strain?

AND THE THROW! Up...up...and Away! Look at that form!

OHHHH! INTO THE TREES! A horrifying miscalculation.

Next, Sean Woods makes his bid for glory:

The release...angle looks a little strange...wait...wait...

LOOK AT THE HEIGHT ON THAT THROW! ASTOUNDING!

OHHHHHHHHHH! DIRT CLUMPS EVERYWHERE...the throw is short...but good enough to assure the younger Woods of victory!

Woods World of Sports

Welcome to the Woods World of Sports, where wacky Woods brothers wage the Battle of the Back Yard, beginning here in the front yard with the Flowerbed Jump. Sean Woods clears the tulip field with ease.

Earl Woods is up next, clearing the treacherous tulips with grace and panache. This event: a tie!

Next event: the fiendish Net Toss. Contestants must escape the net, tossed by Saskatchewan Bob. Sean begins his run.

The net is in the air - can Sean evade?

Up, up...

...and away! Sean escapes.
Earl's out of the starting gate with a measured yet powerful stride. Will it be enough?

A precision throw! But Earl's lightning speed may yet win the day.

The crowd gasps in suspense - they've never seen an event like this!

Ladies and gentlemen, just a moment - it looks like - wait - wait -

Yes! Yes! Ladies and gentlemen, Earl J. Woods has been snared! Sean Woods takes a dramatic 1-0 lead! But up next - the flowerpot throw!

Zenith of Comic Art: Tiger Girl

How I wish people would talk like this in real life. From Tiger Girl #1.

Television! Astounding new development of modern super-science! When grownups in spandex pajamas clash - television is there!

Wolf Hound - not just a D-level supervillain, but an unheralded sexual icon.

You're right about one thing, Tiger Girl - there's certainly something kinky about all this.

In a comic book, is it easier to qualify for the giggling academy, or police academy?

Comic books - not just entertainment, but the medium for social progress.

Journey to the Edge of Nowhere, Part II: Five Million Years to Earl

The idea of going back to Leaf Rapids had been simmering at the back of my mind for years. My parents had done it in the early nineties, and they reported that the town, while still reasonably lively, had much diminished in the years since we’d left. Churchill Place, the crescent where our home had been, had been bulldozed, erased; so already there was one memory I could never physically recapture. And Leaf Rapids made national news more than once in the eighties and nineties when it was threatened by forest fires; one such blaze had killed several firefighters defending the town. The population kept shrinking; Ruttan Mine, which had prompted the town’s creation in the first place back in the early 70s, was being gradually abandoned, and without the mine to fuel Leaf Rapids’ economy, it threatened to become a ghost town. There were only 500 people left.

I had to go back before there was no one left at all – before this tiny outpost of humanity slid off the edge of nowhere and into the abyss of ill-remembered history.

So with a little trepidation – what kind of a holiday was a 19 hour drive to a nowhere town in northern Manitoba? – I asked Sylvia if she were up to the trip. I should have remembered that Sylvia likes adventure of all kinds, even unconventional ones; she said yes, and even looked forward to the journey.

I borrowed a couple of maps and a cooler from my parents, some camping gear from Sean, and loaded up the car with all the supplies I thought we’d need for our trek.

We left Edmonton on a sunny afternoon, CDs and maps at the ready. And as we journeyed together, travelling northwest into the future at that universal constant of one second per second, my thoughts sped backward at far greater speed…

Leaf Rapids’ movie theatre, like almost every other business in the little town, was housed in the Town Centre. It backed onto the stage of the school gymnasium, where I’d played the Wizard of Garbage in a school play on littering (a role won by draw – I was thrilled).
During the school year, the theatre owners screened free movies at lunch hour for the children. I don’t know how they did it, but they brought in movie serials from the 40s, replicating the moviegoing experience of generations long past. And there were double features, including a double-bill that would sear science fiction into my psyche forever: When Worlds Collide and War of the Worlds, both pretty intense films for a kid…

…but nothing, nothing compared to the horror that was Hammer Studio’s Five Million Years to Earth.

More properly known as Quatermass and the Pit, Five Million Years to Earth is the third of a series of British films detailing the exploits of an intrepid, eccentric rocket scientist. In this adventure, Quatermass is brought in to investigate a strange artifact uncovered during the expansion of a subway line in London. It’s an alien ship, filled with strange, insect-like corpses. And before the end of the film, the very nature of human identity will be forever changed, in ways utterly rational and utterly terrifying.

It’s vintage Hammer, a film of steadily mounting dread. And it was too much for the seven or eight year old boy I was. As the film approached its climax, the heroes fighting to stop a devastating psychic storm that threatened to destroy the world, a demon of our own making rose to put an end to us all, and I ran screaming from the theatre all the way home.

As an adult, I can appreciate the film for its intelligence and daring, overlooking the cheap special effects and sets. The low budget certainly didn’t interfere in my belief in the events of the film; I had nightmares for years.

One of those nightmares still gives me chills. In it, I’m having a run of the mill dream, which is interrupted by the steady thump-thump of a beating heart, presumably my own. I then tell the other occupants of the dream that my “nightmare alert” is going off, and that I have to wake up. I know what’s coming. Background details of the precursor dream fade away, the other people fading out last, leaving me in a sterile white void; and as the heartbeat grows louder and louder,

I start to cry, trying to wake myself up, but it’s no use.

I find myself on the path that led from our townhouse to the Town Centre, the path I followed to school and back every day. But it’s nighttime, and I can barely see the stars, for the woods have grown thick, branches folding inward, like bony fingers slowly descending to capture and crush little boys. I start to run, my beating heart so loud it’s painful, but I can’t wake up, not until events play themselves out.

I run as fast as I can, knowing that if I reach the Town Centre I’ll be safe, but the pathway goes on and on and then I feel the rumbling from deep within the earth, below and just behind me. A giant green hand erupts from the depths, and I can see it without turning, the yellowed nails, the closing fingers, the hairy wrist; and then it grabs me and pulls me all the way down to hell, and I can’t wake up until I see the hole above me closing forever.

Eventually I managed to endure this dream without running in tears to my parents, but it took awhile.

Of course, these days I delight in the grim atmosphere of Five Million Years to Earth, and the scientific literacy of the picture fills me with hope rather than horror. For better or worse, it influenced my development as a neurotic movie/sf geek. The film shaped me, just as Leaf Rapids shaped me, just as every moment in time shapes the course of our personal evolution, leading to that ephemeral moment we call the now.

And in the now that was then, Sylvia and I reached the first milestone of our journey, the first of two border towns on our route: Lloydminster, where we stopped at Tim Horton’s for refreshments. I took a moment to absorb how the place had changed since I’d last been there. It seemed to me that all North American cities looked much the same now, with the same restaurant chains and hardware stores, the same strip mall city planning, the same architecture.
I wondered if Leaf Rapids, even in its magnificent isolation, could have possibly remained untouched by the progress of market conformity. Could a trip like this end in anything but disappointment?

The child I was trying to recapture, lost in the inexorably receding wave of time, might as well have been five million years away as the few thousand kilometres we would soon cover. Chasing after a boy who no longer existed was probably a fool’s errand. Probably.

But we were going to find out in person. We headed east on the Yellowhead, the sun at our backs, slowly falling to earth, just as it would for another five thousand times a million years, once a day, heedless of the concerns of its human children, its light shining as brightly on the edge of nowhere as it did anywhere else, blind to prejudice, blind to history, blind to the fears its nightly absence inspired in little boys.

Read Part III. 

Lawnmower Man

Before the days when the valiant Shadow People warned unwary humans of the dangers of playing with power tools, children could be easily entertained by placing them atop a running lawnmower. Here, my mom demonstrates. This is sometime in 1971, in between our move from Flin Flon to Thompson; Dad was up in Thompson looking for a place for us to live, so Mom and I stayed with her parents near Virden, in southern Manitoba.

Back to the saga of our trip to Leaf Rapids soon...

Happy 4th Anniversary, Sylvia!

It's been four years since Sylvia and I started dating, so here's an image that I think captures how I feel about her. Ooooooooo, she's so cute!

Also, Captain Kirk Takes a Seat

To celebrate our anniversary, Sylvia picked up this astonishing representation of Captain James T. Kirk sitting in his command chair. AWESOME

Journey to the Edge of Nowhere, Part I

Earl J. Woods prepares for his first day of school. Leaf Rapids, Manitoba, 1974

I grew up in northern Manitoba. Born in Flin Flon, moved to Thompson, then to a tiny mining outpost called Leaf Rapids, a place that rested uneasily within a vast expanse of thick boreal forest. A hundred kilometres from the closest human settlement, thousands from any large city, it was a town on the edge of nowhere.

My parents, brother and I left Leaf Rapids in 1979 and came to Alberta. Last year, I went back.

On the outskirts of the Sinkhole.

Leaf Rapids isn't exactly the world's hottest tourist destination, except for a few American hunters and fishermen who come up every summer. So why go back?

Earl and Sean Woods at 8 Churchill Place in Leaf Rapids. Note the 70s decor.

I'm not an outdoorsy type. I'm content to stay comfortably indoors, in a climate controlled environment, curled up with a book. And yet, the woods in Leaf Rapids were so huge, the silences so deep, the topography so alien that I still dream of the place. The isolation was profound - one small shopping mall, a few dozen houses, some scattered businesses and utility buildings, surrounded by nature that was utterly ancient.

At first, you couldn't even drive to Leaf Rapids; we had to fly in. A timber wolf chased me to school once. The school gymnasium backed onto the town's movie theatre, and nearly every business establishment, as well as the curling rink, hotel and town offices, were crammed into the Town Centre. The dragonflies were as large as birds, at the scale of my preschool size. Ravens raided the sealed garbage bins in thick black masses, cawing contemptuously at the humans who tried to deny them their food. There were trees everywhere, and sand - fine beach sand, as good as any you'd find in California or Singapore. The rivers meandered through the woods; in a canoe, you could travel through tunnels made of trees, then emerge onto a pristine lake, dotted with mysterious islands, outcroppings of exposed black granite, often thick with moss and the ubiquitous conifers.

The stars were magnificent. The night was so black, it felt like you could see to the edge of the universe.

But what brought me back was the sinkhole.

Leaf Rapids, a teacher told me, was built on territory scarred by a receding glacier. The sinkhole was the most obvious evidence of the retreating ice age. It was a long, deep channel in the earth, very steep, a valley worn into the ground not by a river, but by ice.

I was mesmerized by the sinkhole. To get to it, I had to walk through the woods, perhaps a half-kilometre distant from our little townhouse, passing a huge pink boulder, no hint that soon the land would drop off suddenly, leaving you at the lip of what was very nearly a cliff.

But soon enough you were there, at the edge of the abyss, looking over the tops of the trees growing below you, on the sinkhole floor.

And then, carefully, you could journey downward, using the trees as handholds to keep from tumbling down the side of the hole. After a few minutes - though it seemed much longer - you would find yourself at the bottom, standing in a valley so narrow it felt like if your arms were just a little longer, you could reach out and touch both sides.

Looking up, the trees would tower above you, the sky just barely visible, a narrow strip of blue through the branches. Your feet would sink into the thick carpet of green-hued moss.

If you were alone, you might think of monsters. If you were with a friend, you might pretend to be Captain Kirk and Mister Spock, or one of the Fantastic Four. Or simply a cop or a robber.

The sinkhole was an engine of the imagination. When we left it behind, I was 10.

Last July, I decided that Sylvia needed to see it. And so we packed my little car full of supplies and headed northeast, bound for the edge of nowhere.

TO BE CONTINUED...