Retro-Futurist Bikes

For your Gernsbackian delight, Well Medicated blog has a post up with 45 covers of classic pulp science magazines. Check out the title link for all kinds of groovy domed houses, jet-packs, and flying cars. I have of course selected all the cycle related covers, for your immediate edification.



via bOINGbOING

War of the Worlds II: The Steampunk Sequel

I just got a report on a new animated movie co-written by David Abramowitz, and using the voice talent of well, most of the cast of Highlander the Series, as well as Adam Baldwin, from Firefly. Sounds pretty cool.
The Dragon's Highlander correspondent reports:

War of the Worlds: Goliath that was co-written by David Abramowitz and is voiced by Adrian Paul, Adam Baldwin, Peter Wingfield, Elizabeth Gracen and Jim Byrnes. It's set in the very early 20th C. a few years after the events of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, around 1914.

Because of the source material (Wells) and the setting, it always sounded kind of steampunk to me. At Indianapolis I was chatting with David about the movie and said straight out that it sounded like a steampunk film to me. His answer was "Exactly." In scrounging around I found this site with a bunch of pre-production illustrations.

The Heavy Metal site has this to say:

Synopsis by Joe Pearson, "It's an R rated, retro-history, steam punk epic set in a 1914, fourteen years after the first failed Martian invasion. Mankind has rebuilt her cities and military adapting a lot of the abandoned Martian technology. They've created an international defense force, A.R.E.S., based on the lower end of Manhattan and under the command of Theaodore Roosevelt. They've built a formidable force centered around giant, steam powered battle tripods. Think of "Band of Brothers" meets "Star Wars", meets World WO. It will be cool-steam powered battle tripods, doomed Cossack cavalry charges, victorian decco, steam punk Manhattan, 1500 foot long armored battle zeppelins, Teddy Roosevelt, souped up Tri-planes, blood on steaming metal, sex in the cockpit. The usual." This story is not directly based on Heavy Metal, but it is a sequel to the classic War Of The Worlds novel by H.G. Wells. It will have a budget of around $3 million, and be produced by Tripod Entertainment Sdn Bhd (joint venture between Elemental Ventures Sdn Bhd and Epoch Ink Corp). It is uncertain how connected this movie is to Heavy Metal. It was originally indented on being part of a series of Heavy Metal Videos. And is being co-produced by Kevin Eastman (owner of Heavy Metal).

Sounds pretty promising, can't wait to see it.

Technoccult interviews Steampunk Artist Alex CF

Keeping with the Steampunk vibe of the last few posts, and catching up on some things I've been meaning to post is this great interview Alex CF.

(Above is Werewolf Anatomical Reasearch Case III)

T: You started doing your assemblage work in earnest after retiring your comic series Wilderemere. When exactly was that?

A: About three years ago. I had invested everything I had into my comic career, but I wasn’t happy and didn’t really enjoy what I was doing. I’d drawn and written 18 comics and released an action figure line, sunk everything into it - I remember throwing my pencil across the room and shouting out “I can’t be bothered anymore!” I swore that I would never draw another comic. I’d created assemblage pieces in the past, but I guess it all started with this little box, called “The Vampire Legacy Case” about a 14th century aristocratic vampire, the last rites and possessions of this vampiric lord. I had the idea of creating an alternative past, creating characters and species with which to fabricate my own world in which all these things existed. So I started making, and the rest is history!

I learn everything from scratch, and if I come up against some project or a goal which is not easy to reach, I’ll have a good think and reach that by trying lots of different things. From sculpting to soldering, they were all things I had to learn myself.

Bruce Sterling looks at the Steampunk Sub-Culture

Just stumbled across this great essay by Bruce Sterling, who some would credit with birthing Steampunk, (though he is humble enough to credit earlier influences), on where Steampunk came from, and where it just might be going.

Ruskin wrote an extremely influential and important essay which changed the world. Everything Ruskin says in that essay is wrong. The ideas in there don't work, have never worked and are never going to work. If you try to do the things Ruskin described in the spirit that Ruskin suggested, you are doomed.

However. If you try to do those things in a steampunk spirit, you might get somewhere useful. Steampunks are equipped with a number of creative tools and approaches that John Ruskin never imagined, such as design software, fabricators, Instructables videos, websites, wikis, cellphones, search engines and etsy.com. Successful steampunks are not anti-industrial as Ruskin was. They are digital natives and therefore post-industrial. This means that they can make their own, brand-new, fresh mistakes -- if they understand the old mistakes well enough not to repeat them.

Steampunk's key lessons are not about the past. They are about the instability and obsolescence of our own times. A host of objects and services that we see each day all around us are not sustainable. They will surely vanish, just as "Gone With the Wind" like Scarlett O'Hara's evil slave-based economy. Once they're gone, they'll seem every bit as weird and archaic as top hats, crinolines, magic lanterns, clockwork automatons, absinthe, walking-sticks and paper-scrolled player pianos. ...

The past is a kind of future that has already happened.

Datamancer's Ergonomic Steampunk Keyboard

Man, is this thing gorgeous!

This keyboard was commissioned by a female client and has some elegant, feminine design features such as violet LEDs, an acanthus-leaf pattern etched into the brass, and a soft burgundy wrist pad that is removable for cleaning. It also has a built-in "buttonless" touchpad mouse in the center (tap anywhere to left-click and drag, tap in the top-right corner to right-click). This keyboard is interesting because the typing plane is actually tipped forward rather than back. It looks odd at first, but actually makes for a very comfortable typing position.

Datamancer has been cranking out a lot of great keyboards in the last year, but I think this one really takes the cake.

Steampunk Recumbent Trike

Proving that personal vehicle experimenters are just a hair away from Steampunk mad-scientists is this gorgeous trike, complete with leather trunk. Lots more drool-worthy photos over at Jake Von Slatt's blog.

Man, love those white tires, nothing says turn of the century like skinny white rubber!

Is Steampunk Dying?

We strip-mine your underground culture
Take the bite out and rinse it clean
Give ourselves credit for creating it
Then sell it back to you
At twice the price

- Fleshdunce, by The Dead Kennedys

Will Steampunk survive being the next big thing? There were a couple of things this morning which some might interpret at signs of the coming Steam-pocalypse.
First is the mere existence of this story in the New York Times Fashion section on Steampunk. Major media attention is frequently to the coup de grace to an emerging subculture.
Second is to be found within the the article, the mention of Giovanni James of the James Gang magical performance troupe opening his own bricks and mortar Steampunk shop in NYC:
He plans to offer brass Rubik’s cubes, riding boots, early-20th-century-style motorbikes, handmade leather mailbags and brass or wooden iPhone cases, all under the label TJG Engineering.

There will, of course, be a clothing line with vintage and new looks modeled on Mr. James’s own neo-Edwardian sartorial signature. “I’m so sick of baggy pants hanging off your bottom,” he said. “This is more refined. It goes back to a time when people had some dignity.

“It’s a new day.”

Off-the-rack Steampunk? Why I say, how gauche! Any real steampunk casts their own goggles and gears from... Wait... did that say early-20th-century-style motorbikes, and handmade leather mailbags?

I am so there!

I mean really, Steampunk was dead to begin with. It is all about reanimating the mouldering corpses of bygone fashion, technology, and manners. So what if someone purchases their tails at a haberdashery rather than a thrift store?

News on the Dragon's Favorite Blogs

Which do you want first, the good or the bad?

Ah, you're like me, you want the bad first, with the good to follow to cusion the blow, well...

One of my favorite blogs is going into extreme slow down, if not ceasing to post altogether. Yup, Steve Williams over at Scooter in the Sticks is moving on to greener pastures. This makes me very sad, as Steve frequently came the closest to describing the ineffable Zen of scootering, without relying on trendiness, fashion, or allusions to Robert Pirsig. Steve was one of the first bloggers to notice your humble Dragon, and I still hope to actual bump into him at some point, preferably when we are both on scoots. Plus he had magnificent photos, and even won an award for his blog. Still, he has a life, a family, and quite a photographic talent to be tended to. The Dragon wishes him the best of luck with all of these, and hopes to hear something about how they progress.

On a more positive note, Tinkergirl over at the Brass Goggles blog, is looking for a steampunk blogging co-conspirator. She is feeling a little overwhelmed with maintaining both the best blog deovted to Steampunk items, and the best forum devoted to Steampunk culture. Who can blame her, she's done a bang-up job so far, which we salute her for. Drop her a line if you are interested. I'd pony up, but my steampunk blogging is probably a little more sporadic than she is looking for.

Speaking of, Steve, if having another hand at wheel would help you keep Scooter in the Sticks going, well I'll through my Stetson into the ring. Heck, living in sticks in Connecticut, I think I might be able to generate ample fodder, now.

EDIT:
You should check out Orin at Scootin' Old Skool's post-mortum for Scooter in the Sticks, his analogy to Calvin and Hobbes is most apt.

Scooter Gear: Part 1, Leather Jackets

I've been promising you for awhile, and myself for even longer, that I would post something in depth about riding gear for scooter riders.
Well, I just stumbled upon this recent article in the New York Times about leather jackets, and thought it was a good place to start. It's a strange article, with an accompanying set of photos of male models posing on Vespas. One of the photos even features a chopped Lambretta, though most of the scoots are modern Vespas. The thing that gets me though is all the jackets are fashion leather jackets, ranging in price from over $600 to over $5k! I know the dollar is weak, but good lawd!
Now, I'm sure the piece was intended as a fashion article, and I'm sure someone in the creative department had the brainstorm that Vespas are way more hip than motorcycles, thus the photo shoot. But I have some problems with this.
First of all, some of these skins may be styled after classic riding jackets, but none of them actually strike me as being riding jackets. The leather looks thin, design features intended to let in and keep out air are totally forgotten, and I'm sure there is no armor to be found. Sure, any leather jacket is going to be better protection than a nylon wind breaker, but these things just scream poseur to me. Plus, I'd imagine one good slide would totally destroy them... and then there is $2k down the drain. Whereas a good $300 to $500 motorcycling jacket would probably just need a little mink oil, and would good as new.
The article does touch on the mystique of the leather jacket:

Since the early 1980s, when American men first truly embraced the leather jacket as the antihero’s anti-sport coat, a new one has risen from the tomb of rebels past every six or seven years. In the 1980s, there was the ’40s-style WWII bomber (very Indiana Jones), then, in the late 1980s, the ’50s-style motorcycle jacket (very Mad Max). In the 1990s, the ’70s hip-length jacket (very John Shaft) had a moment, followed by the 1960s-style streamlined “cafe racer” that would shout Steve McQueen if McQueen ever shouted.

But I think if you are really trying to emulate rebel machismo emphasizing form over function, isn't the way to do it.

My other problem with this article, is that leather isn't that popular with scooter riders. I suppose there are a multitude of reasons for this, from the classic Mod vs. Rocker feuds, to the fact that a lot of scooterists view their scoots as day-to-day transportation, and don't want to tailor their whole wardrobe around their ride. Plus, though I have no stastics to back this up, I think you will find significantly more vegans and vegetarians on scooters than on motorcycles. Plus, if a scooterist did decide to go with leather for their riding gear, I think this article does them a disservice. There are now plenty of stylish leather jackets, which are made for riding and its dangers, which don't make you look like a Hell's Angel or like you are ready for Le Mans.
And while a lot of folks might think that any leather and the hardened outcast image it brings with it would be incongruous, I don't necessarily agree. In my mind a scooter is way more punk-rock than a motorcycle, especially when you get into the DIY subculture of 2-strokes. And unless you are a vegan straight-edger, a leather jacket is still pretty iconic punk-rock. I also think the right leather jacket can be pretty steampunk, giving off a vibe of the classically civilized adventurer in a way that is very difficult for ballistic nylon.

So without further ado, I bring you the Dragon's guide to leather riding jackets that are both fashionable AND functional.

The jacket pictured above is the Triumph Rivton. This is currently my favorite leather riding jacket. It's hard to tell in this picture, but the elbows feature quilted patches like the shoulders, and the leather has a supple, aged and broken quality. We've got these at the shop, and the one in my size fits me perfectly. I really like the retro-styling of this jacket, which though it is supposed to recall the cafe-racer jackets of late 60s British rockers, to me it has a steampunk or dieselpunk vibe. Though it is obviously a riding jacket, guys I've talked to who own this jacket tell me they get complimented on it all the time by non-motorcyclists. I don't know when I'll be able to afford one (list price is $409), but I've already got the patches picked out to cover up the Triumph logo.

The Triumph Portland jacket is very similar to the Rivton, only monochrome. Well there are a few other styling differences, but it still has those assume quilted leather panels on the elbows and shoulders. Of course both jackets feature CE armor on the elbows and shoulders as well, and I know the Rivton has a pocket for inserting a back protector, I believe the Portland does too. The Portland is a little subtler I guess, but still stands out in a crowd of wannabes in cookie cutter 50s styled leather jackets. Again, very retro-futurist. $419 MSRP

OK, one last Triumph jacket, this time the Madison. Not quite as steampunk as the other two, just a good basic leather. Very classic, it definitely brings to mind 60s and 70s cafe racers, but in a very no-nonsense way. I dig the aged leather. The Madison doesn't come with armor, though it does have pockets for it, and is thus a little cheaper at $319. I really like a lot of Triumph's gear. It's well designed, well made, in touch with it's roots, and looks badass in a subdued manner. If you have a problem with the Triumph logos, just cover them with rally patches, or pick up something at Angry, Young and Poor. If you are really worried about maintaining your skooter-boy cred, I'd recommend a Specials patch.

The least expensive jacket on this list is River Road's Hoodlum. No armor, very little frills, costs $200, which is about the least you should expect to spend on a quality leather jacket. This one looks sweet, and I imagine will protect you much better than any of those boutique jackets featured in the NYT article.

From the least expensive jacket we move to the most expensive. The Dainese Montone sheepskin jacket lists at $1299. But for that price you are getting a quality jacket from one of the most respected manufacturers of motorcycling gear in the world. To me this retro-futuristic garment brings to mind the long-standing connection between two-wheeled travel and aviation. For the steampunk scootering enthusiast this is the top, the most flash, the shiniest. Of course it has removable composite protectors at the elbows and shoulders. Now, you'll have to excuse me for a moment, as I believe I just drooled on my keyboard.

Really, if you wanna be protected AND fashionable on your stylish Italian scoot, Dainese is a great way to go. They are an Italian company, with that implies fashion wise, and they make some of the best gear in the world. Plus in Italy, two-wheeled transportation isn't just a weekend hobby for testosterone poisoned kids and guys with mid-life crises, it's a fact of everyday life, just like a passion for fashion.
This baby features elbow and shoulder armor, has a space for a back protector, and comes with a removable thermal liner. Just a gorgeous, and pragmatic coat, with styling that should please any steamy velocipede pilot. Not cheap at about $700, but then again, nothing about this jacket is cheap, and it makes those fashion leathers in the NYT article just seem silly.


The last leather I'm featuring today really makes me wonder about that NYT article. The Dainese Superdune is currently available at Bloomingdales in NYC. I guess I don't know enough about NYC fashion, 'cause I thought that was kinda hoity-toity. Anyway, the Superdune is inspired by jackets worn by riders in the classic Paris/Dakar race. The leather on this piece is gorgeous, strong and tough, while also being light and supple. It includes elbow and shoulder armor, and also has a pocket for inserting a spine protector. Yet again, great classic styling that should make any Steam- Jazz- or Diesel Punk quiver.

So if you are inclined toward leather as a protective garment for your two-wheeled adventures, there are definitely some options out there for you. The links for these jackets go to the ecommerce page for Vespa Ridgefield / Branchville Motors, so if you feel like ordering one of these, I'd be processing that. The Dianese stuff, we handle as well, drop me an email if you are interested. Of course if you are in or near Fairfield County, CT you should ride in and check us out. If you are farther away, I encourage you to check out your local gear dealers, dig a little deeper in the racks, and ask the employees for help. There are many options out there for quality riding gear which won't make you look like you should be in a Motorcycle gang, or on a racetrack. If you don't have a nearby dealer, well, again, I'd be happy to assist you online.

Coming soon, I'll take a look at textile jackets, helmets, gloves, boots, ladies gear and more.

Steampunk Games

Brass Goggles (Which seems to share a posting schedule with the Dragon) has a couple of posts up recently about Steampunk computer games.

Dirk Valentine and the Fortress of Steam, is online game with old-school style controls and graphics. You can find it here.
It looks like the perfect thing for cubicle inmates looking to kill some down-time.

More interesting to me is Remnants of Skystone, an upcoming MMO which is Flash based. Tinkergirl writes:

Upcoming from the Flipline developer, and slated for release on the Kongregate site (known for free to play, Flash based games), Remnants of Skystone is a very Steampunk multiplayer game featuring character creation (look for gas masks, spats, goggles, brass cuffs and the most stunning facial hair I’ve yet seen in a game), socialising and co-operative side scrolling missions battling the bally alien invaders! There may even be the opportunity to have your own floating residence!

Apparently going to go live sometime this autumn (or fall, if you prefer) it looks like it has some potential indeed, and the blog has some nice backstory, art inspiration pages, and character screens. Several of the characters could do with smiling more, but I suppose with alien mimics denying the very ground you stand on, you might be a little disgruntled too!

The world definitely needs more games with stunning facial hair!

Personal Update

As I am sometimes wont to do, I have been hiding under my rock lately.

Jes and I are still settling in here in New England, and I am still adjusting to my new job. It's looking more and more like Spring, and the shop is getting busier. I'm definitely glad I had a few months to get used to the place before the riding season hit, because if the last few weeks are any indication, it's gonna get really nuts soon.

Strangely, working at a Vespa / Motorcycle dealer has increased my self-censorship on scooter blogging. I really expected the opposite. But I'm discovering huge aspects of the culture (particularly pertaining to motorcycles) of which I am pretty ignorant. This experience has caused me to shut-up and listen at work, and I guess that is carrying over to blogging. It has also inspired some thinking about the differences and similarities of scooterists and motorcyclists, but I'm still fine tuning those thoughts, so you can look forward to them at some point in the future.

Sadly, Quell, the Steampunk Vespa, has been stuck in the stable for several months. His plates expired in November, and he needs to be registered and insured here in CT. Since Jes and I are still recovering from our moving expenses, and the last months haven't been amenable to riding what with the snow, and ice and sand and salt, getting the trusty steed legal hasn't been a top priority.

Also, when I was putting Quell away for his long Winter's nap, a couple months ago, he had a slight mishap. His center stand has always been a touch woppy-jawed, and the floor of his shed being uneven hard-packed dirt, he fell over into a wrought-iron plant stand. It was basically a minor mishap, but the front brake lever broke off, and the right-hand mirror was destroyed.

So, as yesterday was one of the first temperate Spring days I've had off, I spent it installing an after-market reinforced center-stand, and new black control levers. These were both mods that I'd been wanting to do since I'd gotten the P, so no harm done. Except bolting on the new center-stand was much more of a pain-in-the-ass than I'd expected.

I also removed the cowls, fairing, and top case for some more painting. But more about that as it progresses. I haven't replaced the mirror yet, it was a strange 70s aftermarket design that I've not been able to locate, and I haven't quite found the perfect replacement. I'm hoping for something rectangular with black stems, as I have almost completely eliminated chrome from the scoot. All-in-all it was a good day, as wrenching and tinkering on the scoot is a close second to actually riding.

Speaking of tinkering, Jes recently brought home a couple hand-me-down laptops, which just needed a little love to become productive and useful members of our household. One is currently acting as Jes's sleepytime DVD player, and solitaire machine, after having its OS reinstalled. The other I'd set up with pdfs of 1st edition AD&D rulebooks, and a few DOS DM tools... before it had a very final crash. I don't think the harddrive is really dead, it hasn't made any of those horrible grinding noises which make a geek's heart sink faster than hearing, "I just want to be friends." But there is some proprietary weirdness going on somewhere between the BIOS, CMOS chip, and HDD. I've been running it through some low-level disk utilities, with the hope that I can get the factory restore disks to recognize the HDD, or at least load Ubuntu on it.

More on that as it happens, but I do want to recommend the amazing Universal Boot CD. It's a great collection of freeware and shareware utilities on a burnable, bootable disk image. If you can get your sick PC to boot from a CD, you can run a metric shizzle-ton of diagnostic and repair programs. Only they may take awhile. I've been running a low-level disc scan for three days now...

Origins of D&D, and other Legends

So it seems that Wired was actually working on a story about Gary Gygax to go with the upcoming release of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. The whole of it is up, and it's pretty nice, they even talk to Dave Arneson some, who has been overlooked a lot lately for his contribution to the early development of the game.
And of course, the good natured jokes about missed saving throws have given way to snarkier commentaries about how lame D&D (any version) is compared to system X.

Here's the narrative arithmetic that Gygax came up with: You come across a family of sleeping orcs, huddled around their overflowing chest of gold coins and magical weapons. Why do orcs and other monsters horde gold when they can't buy anything from the local "shoppes," or share a jug of mead in the tavern, or do anything but gnash their teeth in the darkness and wait for someone to show up and fight them? Who knows, but there they are, and you now have a choice. You can let sleeping orcs lie and get on with the task at hand—saving a damsel, recovering some ancient scepter, whatever. Or you can start slitting throats—after all, mercy doesn't have an experience point value in D&D. It's the kind of atrocity that commits itself.

Yeah, maybe to a ten-year old who's watched Conan the Barbarian, and Red Dawn too many times on cable. But a good DM would quickly disavow them of that notion, as they did me. Frankly, a houserule which is just about as widespread as free-parking in Monopoly, or "around the world" in gin rummy, of rewarding good role-playing with extra experience points, and penalizing out of character actions with experience point deductions, is almost as old as D&D itself.

It is interesting to me, that it is the geeks who are whining about Gygax's posthumous laurels. But such is ever the nature of near-asperger's afflicted geeks to miss the forest for the trees. Indeed Uber-Geek that he was, Gygax frequently focused on minutia while just glossing over the larger scene.

I myself had been toying with the idea of posting some about role-playing games in the last year. Researching Steampunk lead me to some interesting Steampunk themed role-playing games, in particular Space 1889 and Forgotten Futures. I even purchased the original hardback rule book for Space 1889, and some of the Heliograph reprints. It's a fascinating setting, and I hope to be able to play it some day. If you are at all interested in gaming in a steampunk setting, I'd recommend checking out Marcus Rowland's Forgotten Futures site. His material is shareware/freeware, and he has an amazing collection of period source material to help you flesh out the setting.

Mr. Rowland's idea-heavy, but rules light approach to rpg's brings me to the main gist of this post. I mean if you dig deep enough, he has some suggestions for role-playing with younger kids which don't really involve dice at all. They are just based on refereed cooperative storytelling. Like if your favorite uncle made up "choose your own adventures." Which is really freaking cool, if you think about it.

Back in the day, I played a LOT of different systems. I owned and studied even more. I even designed and played tested a couple of my own game systems. Role-playing geeks talk a lot, or at least they used to, about the balance between realistic game mechanics and playability. It's a complicated subject, which I just want to scratch the surface of.

Some of the funnest games I ever had were with a game called Tunnels & Trolls (I was always attracted to the alliteration & ampersand games.) T&T is about as rules lite as you can get, I think it would be seen as ridiculously so by "modern" gamers, but I frequently found that this encouraged role-playing. The less players were concerned with the trivialities of game mechanics, the more they could unloose their imaginations and embrace their characters.

And that's kind of why I'm attracted to playing some 1e AD&D (First edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, to those of you not fully acquainted with the current web-accepted abbreviations.) Because as byzantine as some of the rules might be, it's like having English as your native tongue. It's complicated to explain, but it's also just second nature. It just comes naturally to me, as it is the geek lingua franca for geeks in their mid-thirties. And luckily, there is a thriving community of first edition AD&D afficiandoes online.

I'll post some more about the 1E AD&D community which is to be found online soon, but until then, enjoy this awesome documentary on D&D, courtesy of YouTube:

01: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPCn3KcuYYs&NR=1
02: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RD_t19PpgiA&feature=related
03: http://youtube.com/watch?v=QTF07R7MbfA&feature=related
04: http://youtube.com/watch?v=t2ZB1BPnQJ8&feature=related
05: http://youtube.com/watch?v=vI7CBGLtg4c&feature=related
06: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4Y9r1BvJGzU&feature=related
07a: http://youtube.com/watch?v=W2mwloAsfi4&feature=related
07b: http://youtube.com/watch?v=oNFmWbj4Lag&feature=related
08: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q4bsHgoxW0M&feature=related
09: http://youtube.com/watch?v=osOejhDOs00&feature=related
10: http://youtube.com/watch?v=mKWm9wCR25E&feature=related
11: http://youtube.com/watch?v=hUXnm5EC2WE&feature=related
12: http://youtube.com/watch?v=TarhYY-LAd8&feature=related
13: http://youtube.com/watch?v=fj81WVDWwag&feature=related
14: http://youtube.com/watch?v=lX8NcyYtZ70&feature=related
15: http://youtube.com/watch?v=bTrXrOPLEIM&feature=related
16: http://youtube.com/watch?v=EbQ7jwKk3zw&feature=related
17: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZZosb792cQA&feature=related
18: http://youtube.com/watch?v=whMEXm7TJ9U&feature=related
19: http://youtube.com/watch?v=9wZ8kQiWIJg&feature=related
20: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnhilB5kc2Y&NR=1
21: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLTqoPoWmPY&NR=1
22: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxo9gFBHJsE&NR=1
23: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RWqf4QGCa4&feature=related
24: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra9h63CLtLY&feature=related

So if you watched the whole thing through, which you should have, especially if you didn't already know much about the history and (sub) culture of D&D, you realize that it is basically just a codification of kids playing make-believe. A way to determine whose "bang-bang", impacted first.

So if the Gygax eulogies have made you nostalgic, but you think you might be too old now to pick up a Player's Handbook or Dungeon Master's Guide, all I gotta say is:

D&D never forgets:

So you're a little bit older and a lot less
bolder
Than you used to be
So you used to roll percentiles and D20s
But now you feel your life lacks some fantasy
So now awkward thirteen turned thirty-one
You can't remember the last time you had real fun
Well all you got to do is sit down and and pick out a class
One that kicks some real ass
Come back buddy
D&D never forgets
You better get yourself a dice-bag
Go down to your basement or hobby shop
Check Craigslist or Meetup.com
Chances are you wont have to go too far
Yeah the vorpal swords will be going snicker-snack
The ranger and the paladin will lead the attack
And all you got to do is roll 3d6
If you need a fix
Come back buddy
D&D never forgets
Oh the orcs are still ugly and mean
And the mind-flayers still make your brain scream
All you got to do is crawl through a dungeon tonight
Heh tonight

Well they say youth is wasted on the young
But maybe your Bard still has some songs to be sung
Your player character's a legend waiting to be told
if you can be bold
Come back buddy
D&D never forgets
Said you can come back buddy
D&D never forgets

D&D never forgets is Creative Commons licensed for non-profit reproduction, if you use it and make a profit, I get 10%.

(with apologies to Bob Seeger)

What is a "Honky-Tonk Dragon"?

I've just realized that we are rapidly approaching the Dragon's second birthday.
And I guess it is about time that I publicly address the question of just what this blog is really about.
Like writing an artist's statement, this is a project I've attempted many times, but never been able to satisfactorily complete. The working definition I've been operating under for at least the last year, is that Honky-Tonk Dragon is a lifestyle blog for weirdos.

As an adolescent, I was always attracted to the term "alternative lifestyle." Examined superficially it has so much potential. It suggested to me, someone who was deeply influenced by the writings of Thoreau, Kerouac, Stewart Brand, Douglas Adams, and Hunter S. Thompson. It took me a while to realize that it was really a euphemism for someone who enjoys the intimate company of their own gender.
Not that the Dragon has any issue with that. In fact, socially, I prefer the company of sexual deviants. But, when it comes to the bedroom, well, I think men smell bad.

As an aside, I was in college when the term "metrosexual" first entered common parlance. My roommate Klint, in trying to define the term, tried to use me as an example. After all, I'm urbane, educated, creative, obsessed with the arts and independent film, love to cook, and had the worldliness of being ten years his senior. But somehow, almost as soon as he'd said it, he realized that it didn't fit. I was still a little too redneck, and a little too much the burnt-out grandpa punk, to fit the exfoilating lotion stereotype of a metrosexual.

So, in a sense, that is what a Honky-Tonk Dragon is, a metrosexual punk-rock redneck.
The smoldering remains that are left after the explosion of that cognitive dissonance, that is what a Honky-Tonk Dragon is.

But the intent of this post was to help you, the innocent reader, comprehend what you can expect from a Honky-Tonk Dragon Blog. And, as always, I am merely dancing aroung the issue. And that might be the best definition of what you can expect. Not dancing around the issue in general, as I hope that I will always say what I mean. But, dancing around the issue as to what you expect.

This blog is, has always been, and will most likely continue to be, a record of my Asperger-like obsessions, whether those be scooters, art, steampunk, or pop culture. I hope that it is a place for you to come to find things that are ignored by the mainstream media. And personally, I see a connection between these disparate themes. I don't know what else to call that connection besides Honky-Tonk Dragon.

Like I said, it's a Lifestyle Blog for Weirdos. And like the man says, "When the going turns weird, the weird turn pro."

I hope you'll stick with me, to see what develops.

Steampunk Courtship

I've seen this a couple of places today, but the Make! Blog was the most recent.
Jake Von Slatt, who I've mentioned more then once in these photons, has linked to a heart-struck young tinkerer who has turned his predilection to not-leaving-well-enough-alone to matters of the heart.
Dave Veloz borrowed heavily from Von Slatt's designs to create a steampunk workstation based around a Mac Mini for his bride to be.
Now, that my friends is some true romance. Seriously, click on the title link for some pics that will redefine your concepts of industrial design.
If my sweetie wasn't so philosophically opposed to the concept of marriage, I'd do something like this for her... of course my source material would be a Vespa LXS, not a Mac Mini, but you get the idea.

Jake Von Slatt Interview: The Dynamics of the Personal Industrial Revolution

The blog Bostodelphia has a fantastic interview with Steampunk legend Jake Von Slatt.

Definitely worth reading, it explores some of his personal philosophy of how Steampunk could have economic as well as aesthetic and technological aspects...

CP: Is the essence of being a "steampunk(er?)" in the creation of steampunk crafts or in the mere consumption of them? How significant is the do-it-yourself model to steampunk, as opposed to something like goth where there's a ready market of fashion accessories, music, etc. to decorate one's self with, and thus no need for DIY? Relatedly, does the burgeoning market for luxury steampunk goods (JvS's keyboard can be purchased from another steampunker, Datamancer detract from the DIY, homespun air to most steampunk websites?

JVS: Not at all! Being an individual artisan making unique items and selling them to the non-player characters is very much in line with my view of what makes a Steam Punk. I firmly believe that all artists should be able to make a living wage plying their art and the internet has given us the platform to do so.

However, if a corporation starts manufacturing steampunk keyboards in large quantities it's likely that the Steam Punks will eschew them even if fans of Steampunk buy them up by the hundreds. That's OK too, we love our fans and understand that not everyone would want or can afford a handmade keyboard.

I myself sell nothing, I consider my product to be the entertainment my website provides to my visitors. In fact, I will shortly be publishing a licensing notice on my site which will state that my designs are licensed under Creative Commons, Non-Commercial Attribution, Share-alike license with a commercial exception for individual artisans. That is to say people are welcome to make copies of my work and sell them as long as they credit me for the design and the profits are supporting an individual or family.

CTI: On that licensing, do you see any affinity in the philosophy of Creative Commons, NCA, "share" licenses and the "gentleman tinkerer" steampunk may be a throwback to? A techno-romantic idea, as I'm really not sure how well this is supported by history, that technology is simply an expression of an open scientific community, so all technology should be fundamentally open, non-proprietary to better facilitate the exchange of ideas. This notion of course flies in the face of the contemporary model for "product development". Key to this is whether this is simply romantic (or hyper intellectually liberal) thinking, or can we really point to steam-age precedent.

JVS: Ah, it's a common mistake to think we care about what the past was. We're much more interested in what it should have been and what the future can be. I like Cory Doctorow's "reputation economy" concept a lot and I see something of it in the way the current crop of Steampunk enthusiasts interact on the net. A "gentleman" would not outright copy someone else's work, if only because the community would recognize it and his cred would drop.

As for the real world, I feel that there should be some patent protection to give companies the incentive to be first to market with a new technology, but it should reflect typical product development times, nothing longer.

Ultimately, desktop fabrication is going to eliminate much of manufacturing and then it will be only ideas that hold real value (see here. ) Recently an economist at Cambridge published a paper on optimal copyright length - his conclusion is that 14 years is optimal in term of economic benefit. That sounds about right to me.

via Brass Goggles

Free Online Warren Ellis Steampunkish Comic: Freak Angels

I just read the first installment of Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield's new steamy graphic work, Freak Angels, and I gotta say I am intrigued.
The art is simply lovely, the setting is a neat post-apocalyptic steampunkish world, and the writing, well it's Warren Ellis, innit, you sniveling human?

German Steampunks Force Lionel Ritchie to Sing Under the Influence of Helium

I have recently been alerted to this Germanic Steampunk conspiracy to take over the world, beginning by forcing 80s R&B stars to sing their hits in Mickey Mouse voices:

Stage one: Force R&B Stars to sing after inhaling Helium.

Stage two: ????

Stage three: RULE THE WORLD!!!

BWAAH HAAA HAAA!!!!!

Look out Peabo Bryson, you're next!

Seriously though, look at the raiment of some of the gentlemen on this show: Has Steampunk become High Fashion in Deutschland without anyone notifying me?

via Neatorama

Asterix-Punk Computing

Retro-Futurists take note:
Neatorama has a great post up on the history of computing. Examples go from flint-napping-punk, stone age calculating devices inscribed on baboon fibula, to transistor-punk, Eniac, the first room-filling digital computer.
Of course my favorites are somewhere in between technologically, if not chronologically.
Witness the beauty that is Blaise Pascal's Pascaline:


The second mechanical calculator, called the Pascaline or the Arithmetique, was invented in 1645 by Blaise Pascal. Pascal started working on his calculator when he was just 19 years old, out of boredom. He created a device to help his father, a tax collector, to crunch numbers... The basic mechanism of the Pascaline is a series of gears - when the first gear with ten teeth made one rotation (one to ten), it shifts a second gear until it rotated ten times (one hundred). The second gear shifted a third one (thousands) and so on. This mechanism is still in use today in car odometers, electricity meters and at the gas pumps.

And supporting character from Stephenson's Baroque Trilogy, Liebniz's Stepped Reckoner:



Leibniz’s design used a special type of gear called the Stepped Drum or Leibniz wheel, a cylinder with nine bar-shaped teeth along its length. He named his machine the Staffelwalze or the Stepped Reckoner.
The machine was a marked improvement from Pascal’s design and could add, subtract, multiply, divide, and even evaluate square roots by a series of additions.


Both of these are gorgeous artifacts which give me some ideas for further embellishments upon my steampunk scooter...

Quicksilver: The Dieselpunk Honda Elite.

Nemo Gould has completed his exceedingly lovely and original Retro-Futurist Scooter, which I have previously mentioned. Even better he has posted an instructables page with step-by-step details of the project!
Wow, Nemo, that is one sexy scoot! Maybe my dreams of an Anachronistic Scooter Society (or A.S.S. for short) aren't so far fetched after all.

via bOINGbOING!

Gaslight Justice League

There is something just right about he pairing of retro futurism or Alternative Histories with action figure modding. Especially, superhero action figures. Alternative History, while long a staple of science fiction, was first introduced to me through the Hiesenbergian multi-verses of comic book mythologies. It seems a hair's breadth away from fan-fiction in the realm of reappropriating pop icons for individual purposes. Action figure modding, seems like fan-fiction made tangible. So these Steampunk renditions of the Justice League feel particularly apropos. Of course the artistry with which they are executed doesn't hurt.

My favorites are the Flash, and Hawkgirl, but you should check out all of them.

via Brass Goggles