Someone in irc who reads penny arcade brought this to my attention earlier today. It's a *funny* story, but it does really seem that the penny arcade guys are overreacting to Harlan being Harlan ...

Those guys didn't come off very well, in my opinion. They also didn't understand that they were given fool's caps while Harlan was given foolscap. And yeah, Harlan overreacted, but that's Harlan and it's not news, or shouldn't be.

Harlan being Harlan isn’t news, but that doesn’t make individual Harlan incidents any less funny.

The impression I got from the story is that they were all three given hats. Could be wrong.

That's the same impression I got, David ... and Dave, while Harlan being Harlan isn't news, I can see how it might shock/rub the wrong way someone who doesn't know his reputation.

Once upon a time, I went to hear Mr. Ellison speak at a con, and he told a lengthy and discursive story about selling the movie rights to one of his stories. It was vastly entertaining, and contained lots of little side Harlan-stories about how rude he is, which provoked gales of laughter, and the story ended with the big announcement that he had finally sold the thing with the right to write the screenplay himself, for some absurd quantity of money. We all cheered.

As I walked out of the room, though, I thought to myself "what were we all cheering for again?"

Thanks,
-V.

See Harlan's message board for more, including an explanatory note from con chair Hank Graham (which has scrolled off the front page by now), and Harlan's version of what happened (which is extremely different from Tycho and Gabe's).

Fwiw, Harlan wasn't given a hat, according to Graham and Harlan.

Ah, well. Luckily, not being a journalist, I can pass up truth for plausibility (or entertainment value).

The cap thing, that sounds to me like over-cleverness on the concom’s part.

I did like this line, from somewhere in the flamewar: HOW many cons have you been to? Intarweb fanbois had to learn their chops SOMEWHERE.