Adam savage, host of the tv show MythBusters, has a workshop in San Francisco's Mission District. The walls and shelves-pretty much every surf ace, actually-are covered in movie and TV costumes and props, some actually used in filming and some replicas Savage acquired or made. Every time I go there I turn into Rain Man, compelled to silently identify and catalog everything I see, names and metadata popping up in front of my eyes like in the Terminator's head-up display. Gun from Blade Runner. Glove from Hellboy. Gobag from The Bourne Identity. Time travel watch from Voyagers!¶ At a party at the workshop one evening I find myself talking to a Noted Writer, familiar from magazines and radio, a star of a kind. She is sitting on the edge of Savage's brown-felted pool table. I introduce her to Paul Sabourin, half the comedy musical duo Paul and Storm, and explain that I'm about to write a story about the fan cruise he helps organize, the JoCo Cruise Crazy, named after its cofounder and headline performer, singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton. 1 After chatting with us for a few minutes, Sabourin moves on, and I'm left alone with the Noted Writer. "Do you know what all this stuff is?" she asks, motioning at the display cases with her drink. "I have no idea what any of it is." ¶"It's kind of my thing," I say. "You know, there's a lot of overlap between liking this kind of stuff and the JoCo Cruise."
展开▼
