Harlan Ellison once did a convention thing in the same room as the Penny Arcade guys. The PA guys got butthurt. To visualize this properly, you should know that Gabe is the skinny one, and Tycho is the one who looks like a plucked chicken.
The full version of Ellison’s statement is a great story on its own but here’s the highlights.
“Gabe’s” version, in part:
So Tycho and I are up in front of the audience with Harlen, and Hank (the con organizer) presents us with some jester hats (“Fool’s caps”). Tycho and I put ours on because we are polite, but Harlen - who is apparently too cool for school - refuses to wear his. I turn to him and say, “Don’t you want your hat?” and he tells me to fuck off. This caught me off guard, I mean I have no clue who this fucking coot is. Then he points to a pad of paper he has and asks if I’m aware that his paper is also called foolscap. Now, I’ve never heard that term before, I pretty much just call it paper so I shake my head “no.” This really isn’t a fair question. I mean, it would be like me asking him about Photoshop or if he can remember what he had for lunch. The guy was essentially setting me up to look stupid in front of all these people.
Harlan’s version, in part:
I then returned to my place next to the surly teenager, as Hank Graham placed jester’s caps (signifying “foolscap”) on Mr. Tycho and the surly teenager. Mr. Graham then handed me a lined yellow tablet in a plastic sleeve–foolscap, in the classic meaning of the word–and said, “Here’s YOUR foolscap.” I am a writer. Getting foolscap was appropriate. I am neither a clown nor an asshole, as so many of the PA adolescents who have no idea of my fifty-plus years’ work perceive. It was fitting and proper that I should get a pad of … well … foolscap.
The surly teenager then asked me, not very loudly, “Don’t you want to wear your hat?”
As there WAS NO HAT for me, I pretty much let slide the gibe.
Well, two aspects of the moment that followed:
1) Someone in the audience said something to ME, DIRECTLY, that I now understand as not having been heard or linked properly, by the surly teenager. I can’t remember what it was, but it was a remark made my someone I knew, in a jocular vein, and I tossed over my shoulder the pro forma fuckyou or gofuckyerself or whatever it was. It was no more serious or rude a fuckyou than a Bart Simpson bite me or eat my shorts.
But it wasn’t addressed to the surly teenager, who had already made snotty remarks at me, not once, but twice.
If the surly teenager misheard and thought he was EVEN IN THE EXCHANGE, I was unaware of it.
Till I got home and saw the foofaraw here.I wonder which version of events is correct!
Oh it must be Harlan’s version because he provides us with facts instead of feelings.
Harlan Ellison is a genius in a world of hacks and like most geniuses he doesn’t get the respect he deserves.
se: holy fucking fuckshit the only part of the PAfag’s story I can believe is the part ellison backs up: he actually asked DON’T YOU WANT TO WEAR YOUR HAT?
maybe we have been giving penny arcade too much credit. they ARE idiot hacks, after all.
but in this case, it sounds like they took an extra long bath in the autismal font. they got pruny in the autismal font.
I dunno what kind of paper foolscap is, and even then I ended up hating pig&bald.
The best part of this is Gabe admitting he has no idea who Harlan Ellison is.
