Category: Culture and Media

Went to Target tonight looking for an extra table for the big Thanksgiving gathering. The temperature was somewhere in the 40s at around 8 PM, with a steady cold drizzle coming down. As we approached the store we realized that in front of the shopping carts outside the entrance, there was a line of people in lawn chairs sitting under tarps and umbrellas. We couldn’t figure out what the line was for, so we asked. “Xbox!” came the reply – the new 360 goes on sale at midnight. We wished them luck.

Now, I’ve done my share of line-waiting. Usually lightsabers are involved. More importantly, it’s May and it’s warm. I salute the mettle of this November crowd. May your gaming be uninterrupted by sinus congestion.

(Today’s Penny Arcade strip is unsurprisingly devoted to a similar topic.)

I’ve been generally aware that Knight-Ridder, the company that owns the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, has been cutting budgets and trying to squeeze more profit out of the papers. I’ve also been aware that some pretty heavy staff cuts are hitting both papers. But it wasn’t until I saw Daniel Rubin’s latest post at Blinq that I realized how many voices that have been part of Philadelphia for as long as I can remember are leaving.

When I was a kid, I used to love to read the paper, especially the sports and features sections but also the political news. I remember columnists and critics like Bill Lyon and Desmond Ryan. I remember recognizing their bylines or seeing those little photo boxes that acompanied a column, and I remember how much I wanted to follow in those footsteps once upon a time. I don’t like the circumstances under which these folks are leaving, but I value them for being a part of the public discourse in this city for so long, and giving a certain continuity to the conversation.

I’ve recently read a book called Civic Literacy that I’ll blog about more when I finish doing some background and fact-checking, but one of the book’s claims is that reading newspapers is a far better means of staying informed than watching television news. I really hope the current state of media economics doesn’t hasten the demise of this vital resource.

If anything bugs me the most about the fact that Joss Whedon’s Firefly didn’t even run a full season, it’s that I didn’t get to hear more of Greg Edmonson’s distinctive music for the series. At least there’s a soundtrack album, which I review on theLogBook this week. Other related reviews:

• The series on DVD
• Serenity the movie
• Finding Serenity, a book of essays about the series

So I have Glen Phillips’ official site bookmarked, because I like to keep up with the former Toad the Wet Sprocket singer. (Yes, I was a big fan of Toad, and I’ve seen two of Glen’s live acoustic shows. More of that living in the 90s I was talking about before, perhaps.) But there haven’t been a lot of updates, so I haven’t checked it very frequently. Well, tonight I went there and discovered that Glen has a myspace site with sound clips and a more-frequently updated blog. The official site is much snazzier to look at, but according to Glen, the myspace site is easier for him to post stuff to. There’s something about that I find kinda endearing.

By all means, go check out either of the sites, and Glen’s album Winter Pays for Summer. It’s good stuff.

With Revenge of the Sith out on DVD, I have been a very happy Star Wars geek the last week or so. Here’s a roundup of Episode III-related reviews I’ve written over at theLogBook:

• The movie
• The DVD
• The graphic novel
• The Making of Ep III book
• The Art of Ep III book

Back in the summer I also did a week-long viewing of all six movies in numerical order, using my old VHS copies of the original trilogy. I wrote down some notes that at one point I was going to put up on the forums, but I figure this is as good a place as any.

My sense is that if I try to view the whole thing as one six-part story of Anakin’s rise, fall, and redemption, it doesn’t quite work for me. If I look at it as a two-part generational story that focuses first on Obi-Wan and Anakin and then on Luke, Han and Leia, I think it actually works rather well. For the most part, the prequels lend interesting subtext to existing reactions and interactions that didn’t really stand out before.

• Rewatching Phantom Menace, I can see why Lucas went the route he did with kid Anakin. The contrast between the Jedi’s detachment from society and Shmi’s love for her son helps set up almost all of the mistakes the Jedi make with Anakin. And the three things that lead to Anakin’s downfall – confidence in his own ability, desire to help/save other people, and fear of losing loved ones – are all established.
• None of that makes the podrace or Padme’s “No I’m the Queen!” scene any more fun to watch. And the Trade Federation voices are painful to hear.
• The DVD cut of Attack of the Clones has Anakin’s breakdown after killing the Tuskens go on a little bit longer, so that after he sits down at the end, he expresses remorse and Padme comforts him. I think that’s a helpful revision. I have to think that Lucas is at least suggesting that the Tuskens are not quite human, so it’s not such a big deal that Anakin killed a bunch of ’em. But I’m not sure how well that works.
• I think most of Star Wars is actually improved by the backstory. Owen knowing about protocol droids makes sense, but the different coverings and 3PO’s memory of his first job explain why he doesn’t immediately recognize him. When Obi-Wan says “Hello, there” to Artoo, it’s easy to read recognition into that if you want to. And R2 being so hell-bent on finding Obi-Wan makes sense now that we know that he’s one of the few who know what’s really going on. Any inconsistencies in what Ben says can be chalked up to him lying to protect Luke.
• The one thing that doesn’t work so well is the Ben-Vader duel. Part of that is just from Lucas wanting a two-handed, broadsword approach in the original films, and a more acrobatic martial arts style in the prequels. But if this were really still Anakin and Obi-Wan’s story, I’d want to see a lot more emotional intensity, and maybe this would be more of a climactic moment instead of the transition to the third act. I just don’t feel like this is a rematch between the two guys that fought on Mustafar. That may actually do a lot to reveal how Vader has changed over the 20 years, with a lot of his emotion dying out. But it’s still kinda jarring. (Some folks at theLogBook have disagreed with me since I first wrote this, arguing that the sense of detachment actually works to show how much Ben has convinced himself that the guy in the suit is “more machine now than man.” So I’m trying to get over my objection here.)
• R2 and Yoda bickering in Empire is also more fun to watch now.
• Chewie interacting with the Jedi kinda helps explain why he’s got so much faith in Luke’s rescue plan in Return of the Jedi. (It might also explain why he was receptive to Ben in Star Wars.) I wonder if Luke mentioned who he’d been training with. I also wonder how Luke got so much stronger with the Force without more training. Maybe Yoda taught him all the skills, and Luke was able to improve just through practice.
• The prequels do a really nice job at setting up the Emperor. Actually seeing how he seduced Anakin, and then seeing the parallels and divergences in his efforts to get Luke to turn, makes those scenes work a lot better than I remember them working before. It does kinda make me wonder where he disappeared to in 4 and 5 – another strike against viewing the movies as one six-parter.
• I do like the symmetry in Anakin’s life. He goes to the dark side in large part to save his wife, he turns back to save his son. I also like the way he uses Luke’s fear of losing his friends and his sister in Jedi – it’s almost like he’s thinking, “This is what got me to turn, it ought to work on my son.” And it almost does.
• The ground battle in Jedi still kinda falls flat. I guess subsequent generations of clones and conscripts weren’t quite as well trained.

I have been a member of numerous fandoms in my life. And if you participate in any fandom long enough, you will eventually find yourself in the middle of a canon discussion. Philosophers have spent thousands of years contemplating the nature of reality, but they are rank amateurs compared to two fans of a fictional creation debating what “really� happened to the creation in question.

If you’ve never encountered such a discussion before, “canon� with regards to a fictional universe refers to the set of stories that are considered “official,� such that future stories in that universe will be expected to reflect and not contradict the earlier tales. (Comic fans, who have been grappling with this issue for decades, tend to use the term “continuity.�) The goal is to have an internally consistent master narrative built from a series of smaller stories. It’s a noble goal, but one seldom achieved. Contradictions pop up, some trivial, some major. At that point, something has to give – one of the contradictory elements must be jettisoned. And then there’s the matter of stories that, for one reason or another, a fan would like to ignore and forget about, to the point of never wanting so much as to risk seeing it referred to again. At this point the campaign to have said story expunged from the canon begins.

To be dismissed from the canon is, in the eyes of many fans, tantamount to being branded a leper. For these fans, the possibility that a story would contradict stories they have already read, or that future stories would not reflect its consequences, takes so much of their enjoyment away that the merits of the individual story don’t matter. They only care if it “counts,â€? and to be non-canon is a seal of disapproval. Last year the BBC announced a series of animated Doctor Who stories would be presented on the Web and on DVD. Many fans were excited by the prospect of new stories in a visual medium. (The Doctor has had a steady career in books and audio dramas since he went off the air.) But a significant minority turned up their noses. If it wasn’t broadcast on television, it wasn’t “proper Doctor Who,â€? and they weren’t interested. These fans went into paroxysms of joy when the BBC announced a new television series to air next year – at least until they started worrying about whether this new series would fit into the established canon of the previous series. Continue reading “Loose Canons”

VH1 has recently been running a behind-the-scenes special on the making of Fleetwood Mac’s eagerly anticipated 2003 studio album, Say You Will. The album itself was generally well received, though that’s not much of a surprise given the veteran rock group’s enormous fan base. Many of those fans were overjoyed to see the reunion of the group with Lindsey Buckingham, the creative powerhouse whose departure after the 1987 album Tango In The Night left them wondering if there could be a Fleetwood Mac without him. What seems to have been forgotten in the interim is that there was, in fact, a Fleetwood Mac without Lindsey Buckingham. And there had been before.

Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac several years into the band’s life. Stinging from the departure of moody guitar genius Peter Green, the core members – Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Christine McVie – took on the California duo who had created something of an underground hit with their self-titled Buckingham Nicks album (and maybe that catchy combination of their surnames to create their identity found some resonance with Fleetwood and the McVies as well). Buckingham and Nicks were a couple at the time, and their addition to Fleetwood Mac propelled the band’s self-titled 1976 album to acclaim and, more importantly, airplay. But in the wake of that album, Buckingham and Nicks’ relationship deteriorated (as did the marriage between John and Christine McVie), and the resulting hard feelings informed 1977’s Rumours, still considered by many to be Fleetwood Mac’s magnum opus. And it’s the success of that album that has created, in the minds of many, the picture of the Buckingham/Nicks/McVie/Fleetwood/McVie lineup as the definitive Fleetwood Mac.

Buckingham was eager to avoid doing, as he frequently put it, “Rumours II,”and spent the group’s next two studio albums carving out an increasingly experimental niche in rock music. When Buckingham departed in 1987, the rest of the group auditioned for the best of the best, finally hiring two well-regarded sessions players who were both guitarists, vocalists and songwriters in their own right. The product of the new recruits was 1991’s Behind The Mask. Somehow, Mask – despite ample airplay and curiosity from even casual fans about how Fleetwood Mac sounded minus Buckingham – didn’t soar to the best-selling heights of its predecessors. Then Bill Clinton adopted “Don’t Stop” (from Rumours) as the theme for his 1992 Presidential campaign, and when he won the vote, asked Fleetwood Mac – with Buckingham – to perform at his Inaugural Ball. (Money, it seems, couldn’t keep the band together, but a Presidential decree could.) With Buckingham, and without Behind The Mask recruits Billy Burnette and Rick Vito, the Mac was back, and a major tour (and, consequently, a best-selling live album) ensued. Continue reading “Weddings, Parties, Anything, Anyone”

Three distinct cases from April and May concerning the current military operation in Iraq have raised questions about the control and dissemination of information in wartime conditions.

Item 1: The Pentagon has had a policy of not allowing any publicity for the return of soldiers’ bodies from Iraq and Afghanistan. In two separate recent incidents, those images finally became public. In one case, a contractor on a plane carrying the coffins home took a picture of the soldiers carefully attending the flag-draped coffins; she sent the image to a friend, who then sent it to the Seattle Times, which published it. In the second case, Russ Kick – who runs a site called The Memory Hole – filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to get copies of photos the Pentagon had taken of the coffins and their reception at Dover Air Force base; in what the Pentagon is now calling a mistake, he received the photos and posted them to the site. Both the Seattle Times and Memory Hole images soon spread to other newspapers, online news sources, and TV networks.

Item 2: Nightline decided to devote its May 1 program to reading the names and showing the pictures of the over 700 American soldiers killed in action in Iraq. Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which owns a handful of ABC affiliates and which has donated substantial money to the Republican party, charged that Nightline was trying to make the President look bad and refused to air the program.

Item 3: American soldiers serving as prison guards in Iraq – specifically in Abu Ghraib, formerly one of Saddam Hussein’s most notorious torture camps – took photos of themselves humiliating prisoners, including stripping them naked, attaching wires to their bodies and threatening them with electrocution, and forcing them into sexually suggestive positions. These photos were passed along to military police and eventually made their way to CBS. CBS sat on the photos for two weeks at the Army’s request before airing them as part of a special report on 60 Minutes II. It has since come out that an army report completed in February has identified over 50 incidents of abuse toward prisoners, that at least two prisoners were killed by their guards, and that there are dozens of ongoing investigations into the action of American military personnel and contractors. Continue reading “We Can’t Handle the Truth”

Soon after my daughter was born, she started watching the 6:30 AM showing of Sesame Street on our local PBS station. The combination of colorful, frenetic characters and music was, unsurprisingly, a big hit. It was soon clear we would need more Muppet material, and as we’ve discussed before here, Pattie and I are nothing if not big on the research. So I started checking out Muppet websites, and eventually found my way to Tough Pigs. The essays and reviews on the site combined insightful analysis with the irreverent humor you’d want to see in a site devoted to the Muppets. And I soon discovered that the site’s webmaster, Danny Horn, lives right in my back yard. Danny is the Education Director at the Mazzoni Center, Philadelphia’s gay/lesbian/bi/trans health center, working with the staff at Philadelphia public schools on GLBT health and safety issues. (He and his boyfriend Ed live in the suburbs with three cats and a house full of Muppet toys.) I thought it would be neighborly to chat with Danny about the Muppets, his site, and fandom, so we got together for an IM chat.

So, ladies and gentlemen, let’s have a big welcome for Danny Horn! YEEAAHHHHH! (Waves arms wildly while leaving the stage . . .)

DT: We might as well start at the beginning. How’d you become a Muppet fan in the first place?

DH: How did I become a Muppet fan. I don’t think people become Muppet fans. I think it just happens before you’re even conscious of it. I was born in 1971, which was two years into Sesame Street. So I was watching Sesame since before I can remember; it was just always there. Then I was five when The Muppet Show started in 1976. I remember seeing commercials for the show over the summer, and I watched the first episode that aired on the New York station. It was Rita Moreno, and it ended with the sketch that had Rita trying to sing “Fever” while Animal interrupted with crazy drum riffs, and at the end, Rita comes up behind Animal and crashes his head with cymbals. It was so obviously the best thing ever. So that was pretty much it. Continue reading “From That Kid to Tough Pig – Part 1”

More of Dave’s conversation with Tough Pigs editor Danny Horn:

DT: Well, I was going to ask you what motivated you to attach a forum to your webzine, but I think you already answered that one.

DH: Well, there have been some other places for people to gather over the years, but I wasn’t happy with any of them. I was on the Muppet newsgroup for a long time, that’s where I first met a lot of the people that I still hang out with. But newsgroups were kind of the Wild West; they were the lawless frontier. Full of trolls and crazies and cattle rustlers.

DT: Yeah, I’ve generally steered clear of unmoderated newsgroups for a while. And even with moderated groups and message boards, finding the right tone can be a challenge.

DH: Well, you have to be able to moderate well. It’s a skill, and it’s not easy to do it well. But in my opinion, you need some rules to make a group work well. Unless you want to keep fighting the cattle rustlers forever, and that gets old.

DT: In a hurry. It also helps to have that core group of people who feel comfortable with the tone you’re going for, and can keep things moving in that direction.

DH: Yeah. That happens naturally in a group, I think, that it develops in a particular direction.

DT: The Tough Pigs forum seems to reflect the same tone you go for in the webzine itself, so I imagine there’s some symbiosis there.

DH: To some degree. The site pulls in the kind of people who like the site. But it’s also because I run the forum with the same kind of attitude that I run the site.

DT: It works because it works.

DH: I guess. Yeah.

DT: Getting back into the way back machine for a second . . did the fanzine have the same tone and approach as the website, or did that evolve? Continue reading “From That Kid to Tough Pig – Part 2”