That’s all well and good (even if you’re missing the fabulous top to the jumpsuit), but £10,000? Or £25,000 for a chat program? The forum is a steal at £2,500, especially if you’ve never heard of the $160 vbulletin or the free phpBB. But that could just be the petty griping talkin’.
Why is that that all superhero movies contain elaborate, celebratory scenes of the heroes suiting up in their costumes? Do these films provide, in addition to the closet fascist release valve, an opportunity for males to enjoy clothing and appearance without using Barbie dolls? Is this the arch-nemesis of the strip show: men watch women take off their clothes, vs. men watch men put on their clothes?
Yowza, that’s a hot interface they got over there at the International Herald Tribune. Hot! Hot! Could fry an egg offa that thing!
There I was, about to rail against a recent upsurge in metablogging, about to say little and offend many; poised, I readied the metaphor of USC, with its life-experience-free graduates only able to make films about other films; licking my lips, I prepared to encourage my fellow bloggers to pull their goddamned heads out of each others’ asses and write about life, man — when I realized this chunk of blogging coverage was written than none other than Henry Jenkins, fan culture expert and occasional videogame theorist, a man whose opinions interest me greatly.
(Here’s a much more in-depth essay by Jenkins on the topic of online community. It ends with a look to bloggers as “important grassroots intermediaries – facilitators, not jammers, of the signal flow.”)
So my anti-metablog stance fell by the wayside because a) I wanted to blog the goddamned article. And Jenkins’ writing made me realize that b) metablogging is a term for how this community communicates. As much as navel-gazing annoys me, to oppose metablogging is to oppose blogging as community. So what if writer X wants to post about writer Y’s post? They’re sharing something. Better in many ways than posting about media conglomerate Y’s latest article. MSNBC doesn’t give a rat fuck if I link to them. (In fact, they probably hate it.) The New York Times doesn’t want to kick back and shoot the shit with us. Mickey Mouse doesn’t want to hang out. Yet the problem we face is more that of the non-blogging weblog reader, who’s telling themselves right now: if this self-righteous clown says ‘blog’ one more goddamned time I’m going to close the window and never stray from Yahoo! again.
Note to self: examine dada archive when opportunity arises. (via Su‘s post to MeFi)
Creepy article at the Globe about eliminating the Canada-US border. The fallacies are numerous, yet it’s a fascinating issue. Dissolving a country for economic reasons seems greedy and shallow at best, but nationalism alone may not be a good enough reason to maintain statehood. The defence of a culture, on the other hand, is an issue too often overlooked in this sort of analysis, primarily because culture is treated as just another industry. It is not.
Other problems with this article: North America and Europe are not analagous, until Europe contains only Germany, Ireland and Algeria. Free Trade has not been the glorious money party Fagan seems to think it is. “The threats to the two of us are shared” – no they aren’t. “A customs union could mean that Canada has to ban trade with Cuba” – why in the world would we accept this?
Rock band name needed. Apply within. Don’t be shy. Prizes awarded!
Tentative: Taffy. Merb. The Stiffy Problem. Sankey and the Idiots.
Let this be your weekend anthem. Let it be a strong, funky foundation to a glorious, throat-flutey experience: hot pants, featuring “throat flute”. (1.7 MB mp3; not the James Brown song.)
There once was a pair of film producers. They operated in a small yet lucrative niche – the teen sex courtroom fantasy sequel niche. In fact they pretty much invented that niche.
While inventing their specialty genre, these producers arrived at a very strict set of rules that delineated films of the type:
By combining courts and teens, the producers ensured a large and diverse audience for their projects. Teens attracted teens and perverts, while the court scenes attracted seniors and the middle-aged.
They worked closely together, yet each had his own pet projects that he devoted special attention to. For one – let’s call him producer A – it was a little film called “Teenage Bilge Dwarves 2: Space Court.” It concerned a pack of sexy, sewer-dwelling dwarves who somehow got themselves into interstellar legal trouble. It’s unclear what it was, exactly (the swarthy, underdoggish dwarf heroes? the nudity? the monotonous court scenes?), but producer A’s tale caught the nation’s fancy. It was their biggest grossing film yet, and brought them rare mainstream attention. Producer A on the cover of Forbes, bathing in greenbacks. Intimating to Larry King that it was childhood fears of sewer dwarves under his bed that inspired the story. All was good in the world. Except, of course, that producer B felt the slightest peck of resentment with every photo op. And it’s only natural.
Yet being a productive type, he carefully channelled the resentment back into his work, so that with mounting success, his resolve grew – resolve to make his own pet project a reality. The project revolved around his own childhood terror, the fear of vegetarian cars on a killing spree. It was to be called “Autoflora: Plant-Eating Cars.” And it was to be made, and fairly well-made, at that. No one who saw it ever called it a bad movie.
But they rarely called it a good movie, either. It failed to enter the zeitgeist. It did not inspire generations of new filmmakers. The merchandising revenue was poor to nil. Why? Why? producer B asked himself rhetorically.
For one, plant-eating cars aren’t scary to humans. To plants, yes. Plants find plant-eating cars terrifying. But plants don’t buy movie tickets.
More importantly though, producer B in his ambition forgot all the rules. There were no sex scenes. No lawsuits or even writs being served. The teens were purely incidental. And it wasn’t a sequel.
So what happened? Not much, really. They were used to the odd flop. They were churning out enough films per month that it didn’t make a difference. Producer B got back to the basics. He devoted his life to perfecting his craft. He would wait until the timing was right. He would study the old masters. One day, he vowed, he would create the ultimate teen sex courtroom fantasy sequel.
props out to good friend Leo, co-creator of this old-school tale
Scathing review of the Cadillac Escalade EXT. And so the bloated heirs to God’s car, the El Camino, battle for supremacy. (via MeFi)
Some relatively new stuff at engrish.com. (via boingboing)
Oh, Christ. The a-list Cabal™ is attempting to force a meme down our throats again. The phrase “What is real? 415 564 1347” is popping up in all the right places (kottke, zeldman, megnut, RCB, even MeFi). No, it isn’t a metaphysical sex chatline; no it’s not some Nike gimmick – although it sounds a hell of a lot like one. No, it’s this, brought to you by Heather of harrumph and the mirror project. It will be a zany SXSW event where “anything can happen” because “vibrant, creative, energetic people” will be “in one place, at one time — with one question — to answer however they see fit.” Which is all well and good, I suppose; but it still sounds like someone is trying to sell me mutual funds.
Starsky & Hutch, Phantom Menace, and X Files homoerotic fan art. (via acerbia: a belated welcome back, punk.)
Rockstar‘s State of Emergency is kicking up a shitstorm of confusion and ignorance. For those unfamiliar, the game is an oldschool brawler, but the enemies are not thuggish street gangs who have captured your girlfriend, they are thuggish corporations, governments and their hired muscle, and the setting is strictly protest riot. Wagner James Au discusses the fallout amongst the protest contingent, notably Naomi Klein. Concerns: a) corporations (Rockstar, Sony) are co-opting the anti-corporation movement and profiting from it; b) the game obscures legitimate, nonviolent dissent behind “let’s fuckin’ smash stuff” hooliganism.
Some thoughts, questions mostly:
From this interview, Emergence sounds like a fascinating book. (Here’s some good discussion on kottke.org.) Hopefully the book mentions the AI web game, an example of “distributed biological processing,” i.e. a mass of networked humans solving problems too complex to solve individually. Another issue that intersects with that of emergence is that of copyright: if an emergent system generates something of value, who owns the copyright? In how many cases today are copyrights preventing emergence?
Sports bar, prime seats. We watch the game like a panel of royalty. A few hours early the bar is sold out. TV crews. Lots of red. Fan paraphernalia. Lineups to the men’s washroom. Men adjusting their red-leaf makeup therein, keeping an eye on the washroom TV.
You couldn’t have scripted a better game. Lemieux is a supergod. Some say he sees everything slower than others. It seemed that way as he watched the puck as it slid through his legs and onto the stick of Mr. Kariya, baffling Richter and everyone, as well it should have… Oh my!
The bar temperature shot up 20 degrees after the win.
Yonge street. Every manner of horn abuse. Rocking cars, hood riders, high-fiving strangers, smiling cops blocking the street. The shirtless BMX riders came out of the woodwork. All the way down we went from St. Clair to Dundas, following a trail of fan pheromones. Like a bomb had gone off at the flag factory – Canadians in such a state. A grinning frenzy.
And Gretzky, the other supergod, behind all of it. My favourite bit of hyperbole, from the hockumentary Above and Beyond: Like the winged messenger Mercury, he soars above us all. Some say his gift is from the gods. Others say he is just a man.
Mount Olympus threw us a great party last night. Thanks.
What follows is something I wrote while in L.A. I’m of two minds about posting it it’s not the sort of thing I imagine I like to post here. (Possibly, and typically, I might be wrong; I make many mistakes, to quote a great film.) But that particular case in my life-files is now closed, and maybe I’m blogging for closure – or something along those lines. Anyways.
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What the fuck are all these birds? One sounds like a cross between a squeaking gate and a dying baby; one is the proverbial “come here” whistle; another like a sack of gristle being squeezed. They sound like they were specially calibrated to annoy, so much so that I doubt they are birds at all, rather a bunch of assholes up in trees with some ear-grating instruments. Morons poking monkeys. Idiots doing idiotic bird impressions. My kingdom for a goddamned pigeon.
The opportunity rises: I could rail against this strange city, so full of artifice, overstocked with delusion. The land of fake superheroes, of fake milk, fake fakes. But it’s been said before, and really: how could I stay mad at you? You’re nothing but an accumulation of mistakes, different from other cities only by degree of ambition. And you’re a whole lot better looking than most.
I’m not caught in your gears just yet. I’m caught in something else. A tangle of inputs and outputs, of favours and urges, of desires and regrets, a mechanism now just struggling along, emitting sick wheezing noises, making me think it may no longer be up to the task of taking us from emotion A to emotion B. If it is a mechanism, it needs balance. It needs reaction to action. If I give, I expect to take. If I serve you now, I expect later you will serve me. But somewhere in here some wires got crossed. You feel put out, and my attempt to make right falls short. But I think of that same attempt as a righteous overachievement.
I see now that I was testing you. I see now that you were testing me.
Maybe it’s the moment the system comes into effect. That’s the problem. Maybe as soon as this thing is mechanized and rationalized, as soon as we set up the inputs and outputs and favours and balances and counterweights and obligations and all of that mess, we lose the fucking magic. And we forgot about the love, as they say.
I’m not sure. Something feels broken.
It could’ve been a great day. It was beautiful enough. There aren’t so many days like this left when you think about it. And we could worry about that for the rest of the day, to think of how things might have been done better, to wallow in maybes and past variables and potential outcomes. But like I said we’re not running a factory here.
So let’s call off the regret party. I could sit on this roof until the sun sinks behind the fine layers of haze and strip mall, with the asshole birds and the pathetic symbolism, or I could do something about it.
I’m going to do something about it.
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In this case, “something” = “not enough.”
Yet another inane proposal from d/blog: the sankathlon. This exciting new sport combines many things, including: skiing, rollerskating, truck-jumping, picking through garbage, the verbal abuse pottery challenge,* and birthing a calf. Hopefully the Olympic commission will approve it post-haste. (Thanks to Julius and Josh for their input.)
* In this event, sankathletes must sculpt a pretty bowl while enduring taunts and insults from a nearby panel of verbal abuse specialists.
So I’m a pornographer now.
Gawd I love that [more..] tag.
I’ve never mentioned my “new” job here. (It’s not really that new anymore.) I’m producing promos for Space and Drive-In Classics, two TV channels up here in Canadia.
Anyhoo, my work for Drive-In lately (affectionately referred to as DIC by its employees) is the promotion of the 17 Russ Meyer films we’re showing. I feel like an idiot, but I’d never watched a Russ Meyer film before, and now my mind is being blown on a weekly basis: he’s grrrrrreat! Experimental, super-independent, sexually liberated, financially shrewd. RM has many admirable qualities. So, I thought I’d share some links I’ve amassed while doing research.
Here’s his homepage. A 1974 interview, a 1995 interview, and a review of Faster Pussycat from the superior Bright Lights Film Journal. A good interview/backgrounder (here’s page two with images intact). Another brief interview. A page about the Vixen “trilogy.”
And to head something off at the pass here: I’ve watched eight of his films so far, and I’m finding almost nothing in the way of sexism or misogyny. Granted, I haven’t seen the apparently loathsome Blacksnake yet, but its time will come, and we’ll see.
My friend Brooks proposes legislation: burgers weighing less than 4 ounces should not be called “burgers” at all. They should be referred to as “meat cookies” instead.
Who likes dub music? I like dub music. Hell, I like dub music one heck of a lot, especially after grooving hard on Kruder & Dorfmeister for the past little while. I especially loved how they stick largely to remixing other people’s songs – but changing them sooo much their interpretations were, for all intents and purposes, creations. And then I learn that’s what dub music has always been about, from this excellent history. See also the pages on hip hop and electronica.
If you’re American (or heck, even if you’re not), and you have concerns about your government’s “commitment to the environment,” if you shake your fist when a 12 m.p.g. Escalade belches its way past you, and you can put up with the tired Founding Fathers motif, then you should sign the declaration of energy independence.
The nominations are up.
Great article on J101 about Grand Theft Auto 3‘s radio.
Update, April 28, 2003: I’ve changed the title of this page so that it attracts fewer google searchers. Reason: the page is 100K, and the thousands of searchers who get this result are eating up my bandwidth.