DUDE, WHERE'S THE PIRATE PARTY?

So, I’m sitting here at my desk in New York, eating these chocolate stick things that Sarah Mlynowski gave to me earlier tonight when we were discussing the Law and Order presidential candiate situation, which obviously concerns us both, as we both dream of being dead bodies someday. (On Law and Order.) So much to catch up on!

I have promised stories from behind the videos, and I must deliver. First . . . a bit about Dragoncon.

There are many, many stories I could tell from Dragoncon. So many that it becomes hard to know where to begin—and this is maybe not the best time to be bursting with bloggy stories, as I really have to spend all of my time working on Suite Scarlett for the next two weeks. I tried to fit the essence of it into the movie, but there were dozens of day-to-day moments that really need to be remembered.

The Wonder Woman costume—which I have to admit I was a little hesitant about putting on—was actually the easiest way to blend in. I promise you, I took that thing into the bathroom when we registered, and I emerged as a member of the tribe. I was instantly accepted by the other 20,000 or so dressed up people. It was completely natural that I’d be Wonder Woman. Everyone likes Wonder Woman! I have never in my life posed for so many photographs. That’s what people do at Dragoncon—they pose. Or they ask people to pose.

I was a little shy about the first picture or two, but then I crossed the armbands . . . and I was basically off and running. Theo Black bought me that massive sword (the one I twirl so badly and that he does such an amazing job with). (Well, until he accidentally let it go and it went flying . . . but it was great until then.) (And to those of you who wondered how close I came to getting a three-foot sword in the head . . . not that close. It hit the wall a foot or two next to me. Theo felt really bad about it, but I enjoy a small amount of danger in my life.) (Very small.)

Anyway, within about an hour of arrival, I had become a pro Wonder Woman, snapping right into a pose the minute someone came over with a camera. I had developed three by the time the night was over. And then I walked back to the hotel wearing the costume—which was about five blocks, dragging my sword all the way.

This is when Holly told me I’d “gone native.” I think she meant that in a very approving way, as her own husband was walking next to me wearing a real, from-the-set Farscape costume, carrying a robot.

There were other Wonder Womans. I saw about five. One looked really good, but the others were honestly revealing WAY TOO MUCH BUTT. I don’t think you should wear any bottom bits that fit so tight that they create new skin flaps that waggle around—like you have four butt sections. I saw this, and did not like. That is not what Hera would want. I was much happier in my little sparkly skirt, and the cape was great for hiding the fact that the costume was too big and was being held in place by a dozen safety pins.

Just as we were leaving, Cassie and I were sitting in our hotel room packing up. She was reading to me from the massive program book. We discovered that there were literally about a hundred awesome things we should have gone to.

Here are just a few I have flagged:

Off the road with CHiPS: An Hour with Erik Estrada

Danger Woman! (I have no idea what this is and refuse to read the description. I prefer to imagine it.)

Building the Future: In Plastic! (ditto)

Zombie Squad: Are You Prepared? (So awesomely practical! Justine and I should have gone. We know the zombies are coming, even though the others will not listen to us.)

Finding the Evil Within (I could have lead this one.)

Is There More to Gaming than Fun? (I want to know.)

Klingon Karaoke

The 2007 Miss Klingon Empire Beauty Pageant

There Be Pirates, Arrrr! . . . which was then followed by the Secret Room Pirate Party.

Which is sort of where Scott and I enter the story. In the video, you see some very dark footage of Scott and I at the Yule Ball. It took us forever to find the Yule Ball, because Dragoncon took over three entire hotels, so we were constantly going from building to building, crossing streets with huge platoons of Storm Troopers, wending our way through superheroes, going up and down escalators with Quidditch teams.

At the bottom of one escalator near the Yule Ball, we found one pirate all by himself, in his crushed velvet coat, his hook hand at the ready. As we approached, he asked us, “Do you guys know where the pirate party is?”

He was the loneliest pirate you ever saw. We didn’t know, unfortunately. He stood there, all by himself, looking around.

Scott was really taken with the lost pirate, and started speculating on a story called "Dude, Where's the Pirate Party?"

We arrived at the Yule Ball in time to see an entire stage full of Snapes dancing to “I’m Too Sexy,” which I have to report made us go right back upstairs to the bar. The sight was just a little more than we were ready for. As we went, we passed dozens of pirates, whole gangs of them, all with knowing looks in their eyes. They all knew where the pirate party was, obviously. We tried to find the loneliest pirate to tell him, but by then he had been picked up by some Star Trek people.

But . . . let me tell you a little bit about the making of John’s birthday video, which I am astonished to find has had over 12,500 views since going up the other week.


ME: I have an idea for John’s birthday video. We should do a dance video.

SCOTT W: (staring at me over computer) I do not dance.

JUSTINE: I do not appear on camera. But I bet Libba, Emily, Bennett, and David would do it.

One e-mail later . . . Libba, Emily, Bennett, and David all agree to do a dance video.

“It’ll be like OK Go!” said I. “Or not that coordinated! It’ll be like the Praise You video! It’ll be like both of those! Or neither! Whatever! Wear . . . clothes!”

Scott came along, though he was firm about the not dancing.

With my airtight plan in place, we all gathered at Libba’s house. When you visit Libba, even on short notice, she likes to put out a small snack. This time, she had only provided nachos, homemade guacamole, and salsa, fruit salad, hummus, nuts, bagels, two types of cake, cookies, and homemade whipped cream . . . but we had come on short notice.

David had just returned from a visit to his family’s house. He proudly produced a bag of genuine 1986-wear, from when he was thirteen. Astonishingly, it still all fit. We demanded that he keep wearing his multicolored long shorts.

The conversation as we gathered in Libba’s kitchen went something like this.

LIBBA: So, Maureen, what’s the plan?

ME: Oh, the plan is . . . (sticks as many nachos into mouth as possible)

EMILY: Do we have chorography?

ME: (nachos)

BENNETT: Yeah. What should we be wearing, anyway? Dance stuff, or . . .?

LIBBA: I was going to be insane Stevie Nicks.

DAVID: I guess I’m wearing these shorts. I don’t know what that makes me.

ME: (nachos)

SCOTT: You don’t have a plan, do you? (laughs mischievously)

ME: (nachos, indignant)

EMILY: What about a song? Do we have a song?

I plunk my iPod into the base station. The first thing that comes on is Abba, and the first song it cycles through (after the insane “Tiger,” which no one knows but me) is Mamma Mia. I point to the iPod triumphantly, start to eat nuts.

(This entire time, Scott was recording our every move with his fancy new camera. He has much more footage of this than I do. What he plans on doing with it, we may never know. Scott has many schemes.)

Having done my bit of direction, I then let Emily do the chorography. Everyone chimed in with something. We all agreed that it was important to move/climb on as many pieces of Libba’s furniture as possible. That was the most important part. I managed to slice open my knee while doing an across the floor slide (I still have a big mark—it may be a scar, a lifetime reminder of John’s birthday).

The result was about forty minutes worth of footage that iMovie barfed up on four separate occasions, making the editing process a joy! I am pleased with the result, but I promise you this . . . if anyone ever plays Mamma Mia at me ever again . . . I will punch them in the face.

The upshot to all of this is that my beloved editor Emma Lollipop has been writing me for a week, saying things like, “How’s Scarlett doing? Is she easier to make than a dance video?”

Which is fair enough, but it shows you the perils of putting things up on YouTube for all the world to see.

There is nothing but writing ahead for me for the next extended period of time. Feel free to send food. Or a Vespa. Or, as Meg Cabot pointed out, a pink stun gun. While I have advertised them freely here, she is quite correct in saying that no one has sent me one. So I have been forced to take an intermediate step.



Now, that may look like a large-barreled curling iron covered in pink lip-shaped post it notes with stuff written on them. That’s because that’s what it is. This is the best I’ve got. It will not stun you, not unless you drop it in water, but it will certainly surprise you!

I hope the makers of pink stun guns will see this and do the Right Thing.

Back to work. Expect future book-related posts! Onward, Scarlett!

THE DANCE COMMANDER IS COMING

I’ve hinted that things in Bartlesville are far from over. Let’s talk a little about that today, as I will be talking about it later. I’m going to be on the radio tonight at 6:15 talking about the Bartlesville situation on The Agenda with Joe Solmonese, which is XM radio channel 120. If you don’t have XM, they should have it in the audio archive once it’s over. (And I’ll post the link here when it appears.)

As you will hear tonight, I have decided to try to fight this as much as I can. The reason is simple . . . this book has been “labeled” because it has homosexual content. Labeling or banning is an unconstitutional mess, full-stop. Labeling or banning an otherwise squeaky-clean book because it has positive homosexual content is salting the wound.

But people get away with it, because sufficient counter-challenges are hard to mount—and because, as we have seen in this case, people do things without telling the public.

So I have decided that my Life Policy is zero tolerance. If you try to take one of my books off the shelf for an insane reason like this, I will come running and flailing at you like a maniac. And I just won’t stop. And I promise it will not be quiet or graceful. And I’m going to bring as many of you who want to come with me along, and we can all run flailing and screaming. Decorum is so 2006.



Us.

To this end, what I’m working on now is contacting the ACLU, which is actually kind of decorous, but I can punch up my efforts later if I actually have to fly down to Bartlesville and do my long-promised improper dancing. I have no idea if this will work, but that’s what I’m doing. And the reason I think this might be effective is that there seems to be precedent in these cases. Look at this, from the ALA website:

Counts v. Cedarville School District, 295 F.Supp.2d 996 (W.D. Ark. 2003)

The school board of the Cedarville, Arkansas school district voted to restrict students' access to the Harry Potter books, on the grounds that the books promoted disobedience and disrespect for authority and dealt with witchcraft and the occult. As a result of the vote, students in the Cedarville school district were required to obtain a signed permission slip from their parents or guardians before they would be allowed to borrow any of the Harry Potter books from school libraries. The District Court overturned the Board's decision and ordered the books returned to unrestricted circulation, on the grounds that the restrictions violated students' First Amendment right to read and receive information. In so doing, the Court noted that while the Board necessarily performed highly discretionary functions related to the operation of the schools, it was still bound by the Bill of Rights and could not abridge students' First Amendment right to read a book on the basis of an undifferentiated fear of disturbance or because the Board disagreed with the ideas contained in the book.

I like it!

Can it be much clearer? Sorry, committee members (including my elusive friend Janet Vernon . . . 84 days of silence from you . . . you sly minx!), you are actually bound by the First Amendment.

The lesson is this, book banners:

No, you can’t violate students’ rights.

No, you can’t just wildly discriminate against other people.

No, you are not the boss of everyone.

No, you may not have a cookie.

Also, just no.

Who’s with me? Let’s fight them off together!



Also us.


So, if you know anyone in the ACLU, any group that fights things like this, law students who are interested in issues like this, or just people who like authors, let me know!

And committee guys in Bartlesville . . . if you just do the right thing and put the book back, a lot of annoyance can be avoided. Plus, you will be doing the aforementioned right thing.

I may fail, but I will at least have gone down improperly dancing. And be warned . . . this guy was my teacher, and I am just as good:

GIVE ME BACK MY CHRISTMAS TREE

Friends, it’s been a weird day.

As you must know by now, today was the day I said I was going to call the committee. The day went something like this:

Around 11 AM or so, I put up an update on yesterday’s post, giving the e-mail address of the local Bartlesville paper. I had contacted them days ago, but received no response.

12:30: I get a call from the local Bartlesville newspaper. (Amazing, huh?) I wasn’t asked many questions, but was allowed to talk pretty much to my heart’s content. I asked the reporter if she had contacted the committee members, and she said that she had tried, but had been unable to reach them.

2:00: I call all three committee members. I reach no one, but leave voice mails for all.

5:00: I get a call back from one committee member.

This is when things get weird.

He denied the whole thing.

“You’re telling me the book wasn’t banned?” I asked.

“We can’t ban it,” he said. “That’s for the school board.”

“So,” I said, “you’re telling me that you didn’t have a meeting last Friday around ten in the morning, with the participants listed. And that you didn’t vote to remove the book. And that you didn’t send word to this effect to the library at two that afternoon?”

He said maybe he remembered something about there being a meeting last week and maybe it was Friday. There was no answer to the rest.

I tried to get some kind of clear sense of what was happening, and the only thing I could get was that their ban—which he still didn’t seem to remember—is a non-binding ban until they get approval to ban. And something clearly happened last week, but as to what . . . there was no recollection. I got the idea that he was very unhappy about the fact that so many people were writing to him. He made this very clear.

It was a weird conversation. I spent a while when I got off the phone tapping my teeth and wondering why—if there was no ban—didn’t they just tell me that a week ago? Why did it take a week, plus a few hundred letters? And why did this phone call follow so closely the phone call from the newspaper?

And really, what kind of an answer did I really get?

I don’t particularly like confronting people or giving them a hard time. I also don’t like accusing people of things. But do you know that part in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, where Cindy Lou Who catches the Grinch sneaking off with their tree in the middle of the night and asks, “Santy Claus, why? Why are you stealing our Christmas tree. Why?”

And the Grinch is on the spot, and so he says, “"There's a light on this tree that that won't light on one side! So I'm taking it home to my workshop my dear. I'll fix it up there, then I'll bring it back here!"

It felt like that.



Something about this conversation didn't add up.

So I did a little digging around, because as this has gone on, I’ve gotten to meet some of you from Bartlesville, including someone I will only refer to as Bartlesville’s own Veronica Mars. For good and sensible reasons, people have asked not to be identified or quoted—because there is trouble to be gotten into and jobs potentially lost (it’s amazing the trauma that can be created over talking about a book)—but here is the bottom line of what they have all told me:

1. There was a meeting last week.

2. It became painfully clear to this quite surprised committee that hundreds of people were suddenly watching them.

3. YOUR LETTERS WORKED. At least, they slowed whatever was happening and brought it out in the open.

I was just coming to all of these conclusions when Oscar Gingersnort called me. It was midnight in England and he had just come home from the pub, but that didn’t stop me from giving him a highly detailed rundown.

“So what you’re saying,” he said, “is that he called to deliver the good news that you have not yet been banned. They’re just halfway through it. They will ban you, they just need some time.”

“Right,” I said.

“That’s not much of an answer,” he said. "In fact, it's a #$&^#& answer."

“Right,” I said. “And it’s getting complicated. Lots of hemming and hawing and who said what to whom.”

“Things always get messy when people are caught in the middle of doing something they shouldn’t be doing,” he Obi-Waned on. “They start making excuses, and there are always lots of meetings, and people getting their stories straight. It's called saving face. Not they they even seem to be saving face much. It still sounds like the want to ban your book--they just don't want everyone watching.”

“Right,” I said. "Welcome to the world of book banning."

“Meanwhile,” he said, “all of this attention and all of these people reading your blog, and still no one has asked you to play a dead body on Law and Order.”

I was dumbstruck. He was right again!

“It’s not over,” I said.

“Far from it,” he agreed. “If anything, it sounds like you’re having an impact.”

I’ve spoken to Ninja Librarian Susan, and we’re agreed. We don’t stop until they say that the book stays on the shelf. My threat to come there and dance is still valid.

In all of this, maybe it seems like I’m saying that Bartlesville is a bad place. No way! Bartlesville seems like an excellent place. Ninja Librarian Susan is an inspiration, and I’ve spoken to many great people. Plus, they’re doing Oklahoma as the high school musical. In Oklahoma.

Come on. That deserves some serious credit.

Now, on a different note (just to keep my promise that I would eventually talk about something else) let me tell you my exciting SURPRISE NEWS! I’ve been bursting with this for days.

I am officially the SECRET SISTER OF JOHN AND HANK GREEN. That’s right. You’ll be able to see the girly side of Brotherhood2.0. (I’m leaving a space for you to write your own joke here.) I won’t be posting every day, like a real brother. But you’ll see me there.

As my very first act, here is my Hank Green birthday video. Didn’t you know it was Hank’s birthday?

If you take nothing else from this video, take this . . . I am going to see this thing through, if I have to dance my way there yet.

Maybe I'll see some of you at the Princeton Teen Book Festival. Please let me know what you think of this situation and my moves.

OKLAHOMA, DAY SEVEN

And when we say
Yeeow! Ayipioeeay!
We're only sayin'
You're doin' fine,
Oklahoma!
Oklahoma O.K.

Welcome to day seven of the Bartlesville standoff. It’s been four days since I first sent my letters to the committee that didn’t read and then banned Bermudez. I continue to hear nothing.

You have not been silent, though, I’ve long lost count of how many letters have been written. Many of you are copying them to me, putting them in the comments here, or over in the comments at Brotherhood2.0. I have read every single one, and they are, on the whole, pretty amazing. I see that both Meg Cabot and Neil Gaiman have picked up on this little saga of mine, along with several other writer friends and various blog friends I have yet to meet. There are too many links to list here.

I have news that they have gotten your notes and mine, though . . . even though they do not reply. There is a little rumble in the air in Bartlesville, friends. I’m not 100% clear on what is happening, but I think that our friend (she is friend to us all) Ninja Librarian Susan Hunt may be in some kind of trouble because of this. I don’t know that for certain yet, but if she is . . . you can be certain that there will be an unleashing of the hounds.

Please stay tuned on this subject for Susan’s sake.

The only update I have right now is that the library’s two copies of Bermudez (awaiting banishment) have vanished! One was checked out by a reader and not returned. It has presumably been whisked away to safety. Hooray from you reader.

The other one is with committee head Janet Vernon, who apparently hasn’t given it back.

Oh, you naught Bartlesville minxes! Now you’ve really ruffled Free Monkey’s fur. And by fur, I mean his plush coating. And by plush, I mean kind of knobbly knitting. Now you’re just adding insult to injury. Stealing public property—even BANNED public property—is very naughty indeed! Please give the book back to the library, so that it may be put into a lead box, or whatever it is you do with dangerous materials like novels that feature a positive, clean portrayal of homosexuality.

Until then, I’m going to be sending down copies of the book to Ninja Librarian Susan Hunt. I don't know what she can do with them, but they are hers, not paid for by tax money.

As some of you may have seen from J. Green’s Brotherhood2.0 video, tomorrow is TELEPHONE DAY! Yes, tomorrow, both J. Green and I will be trying to get through to the committee members on the phone. You will undoubtedly see these efforts on Brotherhood2.0.

I hope they pick up the phone. Otherwise I will have to GO to Bartlesville, where Free Monkey and I will perform selected scenes from the musical Oklahoma outside of their office windows. And believe me, you don’t want that. Free Monkey REALLY likes Rogers and Hammerstein, and my dance interpretation of the cowboy walk will never leave you.



Don't make me unleash my dance on you!

And just so you know that this has not totally consumed my life and that it isn’t going to be the only thing I talk about for the rest of my days . . . I can tell you that I will be posting a video that has nothing to do with this very soon. Also, more monkey, more pirates, more everything else that you know and love. (Or at least tolerate with extreme good will.) Also, if you want to see me and/or Free Monkey in person, I will be at the Princeton Teen Book Festival this weekend.

But again . . . please stay tuned for news about Susan and any potential developments.

And please . . . KEEP UP THE NOTES! Something is happening! Onward!

Once again, the addresses are:

Mrs. Janet Vernon, Executive Director of Secondary Instruction
Dr. Richard Rosenberger, Executive Director of Human Resources
Mr. Chuck McCauley, Principal of Bartlesville High School

UPDATE: another Bartlesvillian, Ninja Librarian Beth, tells me that this still hasn't even hit the local paper. So, if have a moment and the inclination, please drop a copy of your letter to the local newspaper editor.



We need your letters!