Private Universe

Hey Mister DJ

2009-10-11T09:43:00.000-07:00

At work we have satellite radio, and I usually get control over the choice of station, so I listen to a lot of different stuff, including several flavors of classic rock, a couple flavors of the more accessible kinds of jazz, and the folk music station.

Top three things I wish classic rock DJs (satellite and broadcast both) would stop saying:

1. "It's the music of your generation!"/"The music you grew up with!" Um, I wasn't yet born when the Beatles broke up. Thanks for making me feel included. Or don't you want any younger (or older) listeners?

2. "Back when the music was good." Because clearly all of us who like your station are old fogies that don't appreciate anything written after 1975. Because if you like the Mamas and the Papas, Jimi Hendrix, and Pink Floyd, you can't also like Neko Case, Franz Ferdinand, and Fleet Foxes. Obviously.

3. "From when the music finally got good" or words to that effect. Usually this bit starts with a clip of a song by Johnny Mathis, like "Wonderful, Wonderful" or "Chances Are." Then there is a noise of scraping a needle across a vinyl record, and the song changes into the guitar line of something by Led Zeppelin. The voiceover basically says, thank god that rock & roll came along, or music lovers would have all had to shoot ourselves. Because if you like rock music, you can't possibly like big band jazz, or Frank Sinatra, or early bluesmen, or Chopin nocturnes.

Poor Johnny Mathis is always the scapegoat. His songs are pretty sentimental, but his voice is beautiful. Lay off him already.

Top one thing I wish non-rock DJs would stop saying:

- The DJs on the jazz standards and folk stations are always saying their music "is timeless," "will endure," "will be around forever" (either implying or actually saying, "not like that flash-in-the-pan known as rock").

First off, guys, defensiveness is a real turn-off. You don't hear rock or classical DJs blustering about how important their music is. If you didn't worry deep down that rock had destroyed your genre, you wouldn't need to constantly say that you're "not dead yet." Take a few deep breaths. Musicians are still recording jazz and folk, there are multiple satellite radio stations dedicated to each, and besides, both have been strong influences on rock.

Second, jazz, including those "timeless standards," is only about a hundred years old. Rock is already, what sixty years? Get over yourself, jazz.

Third, we have these things called recordings, which ensure that all of our music will be around forever, short of our entire civilization being destroyed by the apocalypse.

In conclusion, all of you DJs stop saying stupid things and just play me some good music.

5 Things

2009-10-03T14:49:00.000-07:00

Taking a page from strangething this week, I thought I'd blog about five things I liked, in no particular order.

1. Finally got to see The Next Doctor, the 2008 Doctor Who Christmas special. (Just released on region 1 DVD September 15, possibly a new record in slowness. I think it got screwed up because of the negotiations over what American network would show the new season.)

I loved the first plot (guy who says he is the Doctor) but thought the second plot (Cybermen doing something incomprehensible) was, um, incomprehensible.

2. Fable II. Having discovered video games even later in life than I started reading comics, I'm gradually learning about what sort of game I prefer. Lately I'm spending a lot of hours on Fable II. Some things about it I love, like the entertaining sidequests, and the sort of "free-play" aspects that gamers call "sandbox" play. You can buy real estate, get married, have children. Your character can get scarred, get fat, or get more muscled. She (or he) can dye her hair and change her wardrobe, and teach tricks to her dog. All that is fun. Pity the main story of the game is a bit lackluster. The guy over at Twenty Sided wrote about 7,000 words of rant about the lameness of the main story, so I feel that ground has been covered. It is just a poorly thought-out story. Luckily, you can play for a lot of very fun hours while totally ignoring it. Of course that is also one of the problems with it: saving the world doesn't feel as urgent as it should...

3. Neverwhere. For some reason this miniseries gets a lot of flak from fandom. It's actually really cool. The writing is as good as you'd expect, given that Neil Gaiman wrote it, and the casting and acting is also very good. And since when do geeks care about production values? We still love the Pertwee-era Doctor Who for cripes sake. Neverwhere is much, much better-looking than that. It looks like a 90s TV show, which is what it was. Everyone should Netflix it.

4. Dollhouse. So it had some first-season issues, but who wanted to see Joss get another series canned by FOX? Season 1 got better as it went, and so far (two episodes in) I think season 2 looks promisingly plot-arc-y. I hope it gets with the pacing and moves things along better this season.

5. The Ellensburg Film Festival. We just came from Mantra, a Buddhist horror film. It was extremely freaky and really awesome. We have two more weirdo films lined up to see today, and then a batch of shorts tomorrow. Life is good.

More fall excitement

2009-09-27T14:46:00.000-07:00

More photos of our exciting life in the new house. ;)

Some friends gifted us with the biggest zucchini and cucumber that I have ever seen:

Here is the unnaturally huge zucchini in our old fridge, next to some normal-sized tomatoes from the same friends:

Here is our new fridge that was just delivered this week. We did not buy it just to make more room for the mutant zucchini, but it is in fact a bit more spacious. Also, it doesn't shower our food with water at random intervals, and the dials for adjusting the freezer & fridge temperature actually work.

The stainless steel door looked cool, sleek, and space-age in the store. Of course I forgot that our collection of fridge magnets and goofy postcards would impact its looks. Here is the interior. The zucchini is in there somewhere, but has been partially eaten by this point.

Though I'm thrilled about our new fridge, this entry seems a bit less exciting when compared to my brother's recent documentation of nature, red in tooth and claw, exemplified by this photo series of a praying mantis eating lunch (and dinner, apparently). My brother can take a picture, can't he?

Hey, strangething, here's how big the mantises get out west:

Gifts from our house

2009-09-17T17:54:00.000-07:00

...and I don't mean housewarming presents, but presents from our new house.

We moved in in July, and in August our peach tree started giving us ripe peaches:

Here's the tree in the corner of our backyard.

Here's a shot of one of our peaches next to some big ones from the farmer's market. Heh.

They were about the size of apricots, but they were delicious.

We also got a whole slew of cat toys. I mentioned earlier how Tuesday found some cat toys under the stove? After those three, we found two more under there, plus several more living under the clothes dryer, for a total of nine. Here's the haul:

(The dangling ones have been washed and are hanging to dry. It is very dusty under the stove and under the dryer.)

Tuesday is excited.

Movies in rodeo town

2009-09-12T17:21:00.000-07:00

You never realize what all you take for granted, until you move to a small town.

Ellensburg had, until recently, two movie theaters. The Liberty was a quirky, picturesque old building with fancy bathrooms, and was fun to go to. The Grand Meridian is your basic modern multiplex, just like multiplexes everywhere.

They had a sort of noncompetition deal so that they never had the same movies. This was fine, except that the smaller, cuter one (the Liberty) was not well run. We went there probably four to five times total, in the two years we've been in Ellensburg, and at least three times had trouble. We watched Iron Man with muffled sound, and Public Enemies with the picture out of focus through the whole movie (despite Gary's going out to complain). They were always stupid problems that any competently run movie theater would be able to fix. So we resolved to stop going there. It was more frustration than it was worth.

Unfortunately, some movies we wanted to see this summer came to the Liberty, such as the most recent Harry Potter, and District 9. This was a problem, but turned out to be only a temporary problem, as the Liberty has just closed.

I tried to be sad, since it was a fun, interesting, historic theater. But really I'm not too sad, because that meant that the Harry Potter movie promptly opened at the Grand Meridian, so we finally got to go see it, in multiplex comfort. Sorry, Liberty: I would have put up with your odd layout, smaller screens, and less comfortable chairs, but I do insist on audible sound and a picture that is in focus. Call me picky.

This is high drama in a small town. In central New Jersey where we used to live, there were two competing multiplexes, fifteen minutes south of us and twenty minutes north of us. If you didn't feel like supporting one, you'd go to the other. Here, it's now either the Grand Meridian in Ellensburg, or else you drive 45 minutes to Yakima, or over an hour to the west side of the Cascades.

We should be good now as far as the major movies (they will come to the G.M.) but one thing that hasn't changed is that we still have no place to watch the smaller movies. There is a film festival every fall for the real art house stuff, but I'm noticing that there is a grey area, where movies are too big for the film fest, but too small for the multiplex (or for the Liberty when it existed). For example, we only caught Moon because we were in Seattle for other reasons. (Moon is great, but AVOID being spoiled for it! Go see it without reading too much about it.) We would have had to go to the west side for Food, Inc. too. Miyazaki's latest, Ponyo, had a brief run in Yakima but left theaters before we got around to making the trek down there. It never came to Ellensburg at all.

On the subject of movies, if any friends or family out there are not Netflix subscribers but are interested, they sent me a code for a free month of membership. Let me know if you would like it. Netflix is awesome.

The Hugos

2009-08-16T10:20:00.000-07:00

The Hugo results.

List of all the nominees here.

Inevitably, every year, most of the winners are things I have never heard of. Traditionally I resolve to go out and read them all, but never get around to it.

This year I happen to be listening to the audio version of the Best Novel (Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book). I just read one of the runners-up for Best Graphic Story, and I've seen two of the Drama Long Form and three of the Drama Short Form top contestants.

I have not finished The Graveyard Book yet, but I am fairly underwhelmed by it. I sometimes feel like I am too old for the target audience, which is a strange thing to feel about Neil Gaiman's work. Usually I love all of his stuff. Does it have an amazing slam-bang finale that I haven't got to yet? or am I missing something? or were the pickings really slim for Best Novel this year? Neil says he turned down the nomination for Anansi Boys a few years back, which is a shame, because (in my humble opinion) it is a better book.

I haven't read the Girl Genius volume that got Best Graphic story - that may be a series I should check out. I recently finished the Dresden Files prequel Welcome to the Jungle which I liked a lot: the feel of it matched the novels, and I liked the art. Special commendation to the artist Ardian Syaf for the way women characters are drawn to look like characters instead of fetish objects. And for the way Harry's duster is drawn to look like a fetish object instead of an article of clothing. <3 style="font-style: italic;">Welcome to the Jungle to you.

I haven't seen WALL-E (I know! It's on our Netflix queue) but I'm surprised it won over The Dark Knight.

I'm not sure how I feel about Doctor Horrible winning the Short Form. Neil Patrick Harris was hilarious, of course. Nathan Fillion is love, but his character was a one-joke wonder. Less said about the woman character the better. I guess I think DH was a bit over-hyped by the fans.

Maybe I just don't get it; Joss usually writes great characters, so clearly he was making cardboard-cutout characters on purpose in . I suppose it got extra credit for its historical value - first miniseries distributed on the internet to go mainstream. It is interesting in that context. An experiment or a joke isn't the kind of thing I'd vote for for a Hugo though.

Of the nominees for Short Form, I'm not sure what I would have voted for. Haven't seen the Lost or the Battlestar Galactica episodes. The two Doctor Who episodes are both good. "Midnight" maybe deserved a nod too.

There should be an award for "best season" of a TV show too. I guess it would place a big burden on voters to watch whole seasons of TV. But I appreciate a show that is consistent. Stargate: Atlantis would have been a contender maybe - it doesn't always have flashy standout shows, but it is consistent good SF nearly every damn week, which is more than you can say for Doctor Who sometimes.

Update on the house

2009-08-09T10:42:00.000-07:00

We have moved. Just got my internet connection set up yesterday. If you are trying to reach us, email works now.

Things are a bit in chaos, because we ordered new carpet for the living room, which is supposed to be installed this week, and so we have been living here for over a week without setting up the living room furniture. Books can't go on shelves, speakers can't be set up, Xbox 360 can't be set up. I am in Fable II withdrawal.

Poor Tuesday spent the first day hiding from the world, but now she is getting back to normal. Normal, for her, includes trying to get inside and explore every box, closet, cabinet, and drawer in the place, when she isn't rampaging up and down the hall chasing her toy mouse.

A few days back, she was digging her paws under the stove and pulling out dust bunnies, much to our annoyance. Just as we are saying, "Come on Tuesday, what could be under there that is so interesting? Knock it off!" she pulls out a toy mouse. Not one of ours; we've never seen it before. Gazza got a stick and fished around under there and pulled out three more dusty, unfamiliar toy mice. It was like the cat toy mother lode.

You can bet Tuesday is checking under every appliance and piece of furniture now. Just in case.

Our house!

2009-07-18T09:29:00.000-07:00

Still not dead although you can't always tell from my frequency of blog updates. :)

Funny how when the big stuff happens in life, that is when you don't get around to blogging about it.

We have bought a house!

The plan is to move in the first weekend of August.

Batman history

2009-06-07T11:14:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting things I learned from Batman Unmasked was that Batman's history is even more complicated that I thought. One of Brooker's points is that the fans who complain about the 60s TV series or Schumacher's Batman and Robin not being "true to the original comics" are suffering from selective memory. Both the dark grim Batman and the goofy campy Batman have a long and established history in the comics.

1939. First appearance of Batman. At this stage he was way over on the dark/grim side, even carrying a gun and killing baddies. I don't think many fans would hold those qualities up as part of the "authentic" Batman.

1940. First appearance of Robin & the start of some gradual changes to Batman in response to parents' concerns about violence in the comic. This is when it was established that he doesn't kill, and when Robin brought the series more of a sense of humor and fun.

1954. Psychologist named Wertham hears about queer readings of the Batman/Robin relationship. There are quite a few plots that feature one of the team rescuing the other, or freaking out because he thinks the other one is dead, or worrying that people might find out about their big shared secret. There are also cute panels where they talk over their current case at the breakfast table. Brooker argues that Wertham was actually a decent guy and has been a bit demonized by later generations of writers. (Some hate him for even mentioning the idea that anyone could consider reading Batman as gay. Others hate him for suggesting that there might be something wrong with reading Batman as gay.) But there's no doubt that his observations set off a wave of 50s panic about sexual perversion. My point here is just that the late 40s - early 50s comics definitely don't sound like they were about a dark vigilante loner.

1956. Batwoman introduced.
1961. Bat-Girl (not "Batgirl"/Barbara Gordon, but a previous incarnation) introduced. Women superheroes, yay! Oh, wait, they are just there to "prove" that our real heroes are straight. Sigh. Unfortunately, gay teenagers who are reading Batman and Robin as a couple just interpret Batwoman and Bat-Girl as the beards they are. This interpretation is helped along by the clunky comedic scenes where women come on to Bruce or Dick and get panicky, flustered golly-gee-a-girl! responses. It still doesn't sound like a story about a dark vigilante loner to me.

As a side note, in this light, how funny is it that the new Batwoman is a lesbian?

Anyway, it seems like the dark/grim mood and the comedy/camp mood alternated or were both present throughout 40s, 50s, and 60s comics.

The 60s TV series, then, picked up on the camp side, not the dark side, but it is a mistake to argue over which side is the "authentic" Batman from the comics. Brooker has lots of interesting things to say about the series. He sees relationships to other TV genres of the time, both the sitcoms like Bewitched and The Monkees, and action shows like Star Trek and Man From UNCLE. This dual relationship was what allowed kids to watch it seriously, like the other action shows, while adults picked up on the comedy cues and watched it as a satire. Brooker also talks about the series' borrowing from pop art, which celebrates a flat style, bright colors, a camp aesthetic, and cheap and ephemeral art forms (like advertising - and comics).

Anyway - Batman comics apparently took their cue from the series for a while - it was very popular, after all. Then in the 80s, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Year One swung the pendulum back - and I mean WAY back - away from camp/comedy back towards the dark/grim. Well, fine - it was probably time - but calling that a move back to "authentic" comics Batman is at least an oversimplification, if not just flat out wrong.

As far as the feature films, we have had two from Burton (dark and grim) and two from Schumacher (campy comedies). (The IMDB plot summary for Batman and Robin starts out "Batman & Robin try to keep their relationship together" while they fight someone or other... Was it actually meant to be a romantic comedy? Maybe I should watch it again.) And most recently, we have had two from Nolan, back to dark and grim.

The moral of the story, fans, is that you can feel free to state your preference as to which Batman you like best, but you have no basis whatsoever for claiming that yours is the most "authentic."

Philosophy and popular culture

2009-06-01T10:14:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Batman Unmasked by Will Brooker. He is a cultural studies professor, although he apparently belongs to a department of "Communications." (Is it me, or does "communications" just not sound like an academic discipline? It is one step up in specificity from "Study of Stuff.")

Having invested a lot of time on academia in my life, as well as a lot of time on SF fandom, I'm naturally interested in the spaces where these two things interact. I think Brooker's book is a good example of how they should interact. He is a sharp and thorough scholar but also a loving fan, and he is reflective about how these two roles sometimes reinforce each other and sometimes pull against each other. I will say more about his Batman book in the next post.

I have a standard spiel about "academics take on popular culture" type books, which I don't think has made it onto the blog (until now). In philosophy, these books are proliferating right and left these days, and their editors often have a certain fuzziness about what the mission of their book is supposed to be.

There are three things you can do if you want to do "philosophy and popular culture."

(1) "Hey, this bit of Buffy is just like this bit of Heidegger." This is basically using Buffy as an accessible on-ramp to teach people about Heidegger. Nothing wrong with that; Gazza teaches a popular and successful Philosophy and Science Fiction course that is probably the most fun of all possible ways to learn about philosophy. (I guarantee he doesn't cover any Heidegger though.) But I think people sometimes deceive themselves into thinking that by writing this kind of stuff they are also saying something deep and profound about Buffy. And, really? Not so much.

Unfortunately, a whole lot of contributors to the philosophy and popular culture books seem to do these essays, and after making the point "this is like that!" they may not have said anything particularly interesting about either the TV show or the philosopher.

Looking at the table of contents of Batman and Philosophy, for example, I see articles on Batman and Wittgenstein, Batman and Kierkegaard, and "Aristotle, Kant, and Dick Grayson on Moral Education." I haven't read this book, but these topics really threaten to be This Is Like That topics.

(2) "Star Wars has genre relationships to fantasy and westerns as well as to science fiction." The second kind of mission you can have is using the tools of your discipline to say something interesting about your TV show (or comic or movie or whatever.) This is my favorite approach, because I think that subjects like Buffy, Batman, and Star Wars deserve study in themselves. I aimed to do this kind of thinking back when I was teaching a course called "Aesthetics of Film." About a third of the course (my favorite third) was about genre films - what are genres? should you apply the same standards of quality to a "genre film" versus an "art film"? are art films really genre-less? I saw us as using the philosophy "toolbox" of analyzing/defining/categorizing things, and applying broader aesthetic questions about how to properly judge artworks to case studies like summer blockbuster movies. I really resist the idea that a philosophy of film course should cover a specific canon of films - that is what Film Studies is for. One of the great things about philosophy is that you can do philosophy about whatever you think is interesting. Sometime I should put up my spinoff spiel on Spiderman 2 as an examination and reaffirmation of the superhero genre. I see I never blogged it, though I did review Spidey 3.

(3) I used to think that the above two options were the only choices, but I have been corrected by English/Comp Lit/Cultural Studies folks who prefer a third approach. They like to use the popular culture artifact to say something about the culture that produced it. This is not something analytic philosophers tend to do, but it strikes me as an interesting project.

Brooker is a cultural studies guy, as I said, but he is mostly focusing on #2 in his Batman book. This may be partly because he is a big Batman fan, and therefore (like me) thinks that it is worth focusing on Batman for his own sake. In the next post I will talk about what he has to say about him.

Sasquatch Festival 2009

2009-05-26T12:13:00.001-07:00

Yesterday (Memorial Day) Gazza and I went to the Sasquatch Festival, which is an awesome indie rock festival held annually about an hour from us. (Check out the streaming playlist on their website.)

It is held at this astonishing venue:

Here is the view if you look to your right.

Here are a couple of video snapshots - sorry for the terrible quality.

Fantastic high energy gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello causes the crowd to bounce up and down in unison. (This song is called "Start Wearing Purple.")

Then we heard some beautiful vocal harmony from hippie folk rockers Fleet Foxes, which didn't record well on my little camera. Actually, I didn't think their sound was very well served by the huge outdoor venue, but go listen to their contribution to the Sasquatch Festival playlist or find them elsewhere online to hear how great they are. I see they are coming to the East Coast in late July, so take note if that's where you live. I'd love to hear them indoors if they would be as awesome as their recordings.

Here is a tiny clip of southern hip hop duo The Knux on one of the smaller stages.

Finally, here is a shot of the main stage after dark - that is Erykah Badu on the screen.

Start making your plans now to come stay with us next May and see Sasquatch 2010.

Wolverine & Star Trek - Spoilers

2009-05-17T11:19:00.000-07:00

Good month for movie loving geeks.

I liked the Wolverine movie, but was kind of disappointed in the Star Trek one. I didn't have one big problem with it, but the string of small annoying things kept on, well, annoying me.

Uhura. Her competence and professionalism get mentioned, but all we are shown is Kirk hitting on her, followed by an underwear shot and after that all of her appearances are as You Know Who's Girlfriend. We barely see her do any work at all, competently or otherwise.

Kirk. Generic Teenage Rebel. It was original when James Dean did it -- in the fifties. Probably perfectly in character for a younger version of the Kirk we knew, but it was still annoying to sit through. And his birth in the escape pod was lame melodrama.

Chekhov. The accent joke again? really?

Huge carnivorous monsters on frozen abandoned planet. What do they eat when Star Fleet officers AREN'T being marooned there? Eco-system FAIL, Abrams.

Speaking of locations, Iowa. Now with its own Grand Canyon. I guess it was supposed to be a quarry? Hey, should we put a fence or something around this bottomless pit we just dug in the middle of the Midwest? Nah, the local kids need something to drive their convertibles off of!

I did love Simon Pegg as Scotty. He brought the funny, which is good, because no one else was going to.

And I was thrilled to see Nimoy play Spock again. I especially loved his scene with Quinto.

Effects-wise, I like the way ships enter and leave warp VERY abruptly. That was cool.

I tried to love it overall, but it was an uphill battle. It strings together a whole lot of silliness and a whole lot of cliche in between the moments of greatness.

Cliches were not absent from Wolverine either. But the biggest and potentially most annoying cliche got turned on its head: what looked like a standard revenge-for-murdered-girlfriend plot (yawn) turned out to be something completely different. Thank goodness.

I was excited to see Gambit on the big screen, even in a small role. (What? it is like a law of nature that straight women Marvel fans have to crush on Gambit. Like Nightwing in the DC-verse. Who am I to fight a law of nature?) He was great, though I wish he'd had a bit more accent. He sounded maybe mid-South, not at all New Orleans. I get that they didn't want to exaggerate it, but they barely even tried. The actor turns out to be from freakin' British Columbia so I guess I should be grateful that there was any southern accent.

Overall, somehow I had fun watching Wolverine and less fun watching Star Trek.

What other films are you geeky friends looking forward to this summer? Of course there is a new Harry Potter in July...

Torchwood season 2: Spoilerful!!

2009-05-06T20:13:00.000-07:00

We have finished watching season 2 of Torchwood. Suddenly we are caught up, with no more new Whoniverse stuff to watch until Scifi gets off their butt and shows us either season 2 of the Sarah Jane Adventures or the damn Christmas special of Doctor Who COME ON SCIFI HURRY UP.

Anyway, season 2 - the online consensus seemed to be that it was better than season 1, and I thought that was true. Looking back at my thoughts on season 1, it's clear that there were no clunkers in season 2 as cringeworthy as the Weevil Fight Club episode was, so we are already ahead of that game.

John Hart the Evil Ex-Boyfriend was pretty over the top, but since it was James Marsters, he managed to keep me involved instead of turning into a cardboard cutout. I even felt sorry for him, though not as sorry as I felt for everyone else around him.

After the first four episodes of this season I was thinking that they were overdoing the darkness. I know it is a darker show that Doctor Who, but there is a point at which you are just manipulating the viewers: tune in next week and we will kick puppies and throw orphan children out into the snow! muahaha!

(That was how I felt after the woman who didn't know she was an alien agent, the time traveler they sent back to die in 1918, and the alien whale who was being slowly cannibalized. Good grief. And please, why can't Toshiko have a nice normal relationship??)

But then there was "Adam" which I thought was a really great episode. Some of the best acting I had seen from Burn Gorman so far. He really didn't get enough to do last season, other than be a jerk and spout the occasional medical technobabble.

Next three episodes I also really liked: nice to see Martha again, and Owen gets an amazing arc. For God's sake, has Jack learned his lesson about the glove this time?? I hope so.

"Something Borrowed" - one of those episodes where the plot depends on everyone being really really dumb. Gwen didn't think about how her parents would feel, thinking she was pregnant??? And everyone forgets every five minutes or so that the bad guy is a SHAPESHIFTER and could be anyone. Good grief. I usually hate Too Dumb To Live plots, and I wasn't nuts about this one, but it had a few moments of such brilliance that I forgave it. Specifically, Rhys brandishing a chainsaw at the alien impersonating his mother. Great zombie-movie-cliche moment. I just wish they had let him chainsaw her instead of yet another Jack-saves-the-day-with-big-gun resolution. I also liked the way Tosh brushed off the idiot groomsman ("Banana" was it?) who was hitting on her. I expected them to write Tosh all flustered, so it was pretty satisfying that she just told him to get lost.

That one about the traveling show coming to life from the film stock - eh. Had to suspend belief pretty damn hard.

"Adrift" - I liked this one quite a bit. It's nice for Andy the policeman to have a little character development.

"Fragments" - Another good episode. I guess no one gets recruited to Torchwood unless something really horrible happens to them first. I can see that, actually. If your life isn't ruined already, then joining Torchwood will ruin it for you. I see why Jack wanted Gwen as Token Sane Person (pity she turned out to be crazy after all).

"Exit Wounds" - hellovalot better than last season's finale. The story with Gray I didn't think was that great. But Owen and Tosh! :( wow.

Apparently instead of a third season, they are making a miniseries to air on several consecutive nights. That'll be interesting, whenever we get to see it over here (airs in the U.K. in June).

Not dead yet.

2009-04-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

New record for disappearing from the blogosphere: over 2 months. Arg.

I have been obsessed with playing Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords on the X-box. KOTOR I and II have really re-awakened my inner Star Wars fan, who had been in hiding ever since Attack of the Clones came out. Oh man are those games great.

I'm also trying to teach myself to play by ear. I learned to play flute in high school band, and then college private lessons, which means I got one of those school-type musical educations where you learn to read music, memorize the fingering that matches the symbol on the page, and off you go. It's all reading and muscle memory, and your ears are pretty much sidelined. That's why I laugh when people (on rare occasions) suggest I might have musical talent. Anyone can learn to read music, and then you just spend some hours doing drills for your fingers (that part is just like learning to type).

I have had a lot of fun playing like that for a lot of years, but I am finally getting bored and frustrated with it. So I'm trying to learn to play by ear. I was actually pretty intimidated by the idea, but I thought about it and broke it down like so. Think about a song you know well enough to "hear" in your head. Hear it? Okay, you are halfway there. The other half is memorization - only instead of matching a printed symbol to a fingering, you match the fingering to the pitch you need to hear next, in order to match what you hear in your head.

Well, it made sense to me, anyway.

I have hopes that being able to play by ear will open up other kinds of music to me, besides the limited range of classical that is easy enough for me to play. Most other traditions of music (jazz, rock, folk, Irish) rely on learning tunes by ear rather than reading.

Check out flutist Greg Pattillo for some non-traditional playing...

Black Canary, part III of III

2009-02-15T21:42:00.000-08:00

Part three: Black Canary in Birds of Prey. Actually, as strangething pointed out, BoP started prior to the Green Arrow series I was talking about last week. So technically, this should have been part two. Oh well.

This image is the cover of the trade volume Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds, written by Gail Simone, drawn by Ed Benes. This volume was published in 2004.

Post-feminist backlash ahoy!

Black Canary is the blond Barbie. The brunette Barbie is Huntress, and the redhead Barbie is Oracle (the former Batgirl).

Yeah, good thing they have color-coded hair, isn't it? What will they do if they recruit another team member, have her dye hers green?

It's too bad I'm icked out by the way the women are drawn, because this book is really well written for them. BC and Oracle are convincing women friends that worry about one another, laugh together, and bliss out together over great Italian food. Even Huntress, who is supposed to be too scary even for Batman's taste, here has a sense of humor and a secret love of babies. (Too bad about her costume... WTF?)

They get a good storyline too, with a satisfying balance of beating up of bad guys mixed with thinky parts, and all of it with nice teamwork and decent character interactions. BC is written as tough as nails, even though she looks like Porn Star Barbie.

I get that superheros of both sexes are going to have idealized bodies. I guess I wish that our culture was better at appreciating a tougher-looking, more muscled ideal woman. It makes me sad that to be sexy, a woman character can have only one type of look: stick thin, big round floaty boobs, and pouty lips.

I have to admit that I kind of like her anime-girl hair though. ;)

Dishpan Kitty

2009-02-11T19:31:00.000-08:00

I remember during Doctor Who season I tried to make sure that no more than 50% of my posts were about the show. These days I am trying to make sure that no more than half of my posts are cute cat pictures. I'm going soft. :)

When we brought Tuesday home, we didn't have a cat bed, and so Gary improvised one out of an old plastic dishpan held together with duct tape and an old throw rug and put it at the top of the stairs.

We later bought her a nice fancy cat bed, but she never uses it. The dishpan is apparently preferable. She sleeps there every night.

Black Canary, part II of III

2009-02-07T11:53:00.001-08:00

This week, may I introduce you to Black Canary as drawn by Phil Hester in 2002. These images are from the trade volume Green Arrow: Sounds of Violence, written by Kevin Smith (yeah, Clerks, that Kevin Smith).

I really liked this run of Green Arrow. Besides the funny dialog by Smith, we are treated to the best looking Black Canary ever. In fact, she may be the coolest looking woman superhero I've ever seen. Here is my favorite shot of her.

I like how she looks tough and formidable, not Barbie-doll pretty like many female superheroes are drawn. I can believe that she's a martial artist here. I wouldn't want to get on her bad side.

Here she is out of uniform, with her expression of "Ollie, do NOT tell me you are going to be late for our date because you have been goofing off with Hawkman."

I gotta remember to find out what Phil Hester has been drawing since 2002.

The only downside here is that BC is not particularly well-served by the plot. Since it is Green Arrow's book, she is pretty much relegated to the Girlfriend role. And GA is pretty crap at relationships.

So it is a little demoralizing to see this cool woman following around this clueless guy, when she could so clearly do better. She's not lacking in self-confidence. Why is she wasting her time trying to whip GA into good boyfriend material?

I think it is a law of the DC universe that BC loves GA, no matter what. People can come back from the dead all the time, but no way can Dinah permanently dump Ollie.

But hey, quibbles aside, look how cool she looks. :)

Black Canary, part I of III

2009-01-31T12:27:00.000-08:00

Black Canary is one of the longest-lived female superheroes in the DC universe. Because she's been around a long time and because she doesn't have the unchanging iconic status of, say, Wonder Woman, it's interesting to compare the way she is drawn and written over the decades.

Images taken from books I happen to own - I haven't made any attempt to be complete. Sorry for the poor quality, but I hope they are good enough to get my points across.

Here is Black Canary in the 1980s, in Justice League: A New Beginning, written by Keith Giffen & J.M. DeMatteis, drawn by Kevin Maguire.

She gets to be fairly bad ass on occasion. Here she is taking out a baddie (while elsewhere Blue Beetle bitches and moans).

I like her practical look, although of course it seems really dated now. (Check out that 70s hair! and what is up with those gigantic tops on her white boots?)

Unfortunately her dialog is a bit painful. I think one of the writers said to the another, "Hey, I hear tell of thing thingummy called Feminism. Let's make her a Feminist! We'll be topical!"

Other writer: "OK! But how do we do it?"

First writer: "Um, I think those women called feminists don't like being hit on by total jerks. And, um, they are all, um, independent and stuff."

Other writer: "Got it!"

So, they wrote Guy Gardner (the Green Lantern at the time) as a total jerk, and then they had Angry Feminist Black Canary try to verbally slap him down. She is furious yet ineffectual, and he gets to insinuate that she is secretly attracted to him. Hilarity ensues, except for how it doesn't.

Actual dialog taken from the comic:

Guy: "That's the way it always works, Babe -- first they tell me I'm insufferable... then they BEG me to take them HOME."

Black Canary: "Why, you slimy, disgusting...!"

Me: Sigh.

And then they decided that "independent" must include "whiny, childish, and ungracious." I dunno if you can read this page, but it shows Black Canary being hauled up into the sky, then plummeting towards certain death while explaining to another teammate (I think that yellow & blue guy is Booster Gold) that no, she can't fly herself. In the bottom two panels, she is caught by that Christmas-looking dude (I think his name is Mister Miracle).

Dialog of the last two panels, for your cringing pleasure:

Mister Miracle: "Hang ON, Canary -- I'm coming!"

Black Canary: "Go AWAY -- I can save MYSELF!"

MM: "How?"

BC (plummeting): "I haven't figured it OUT yet."

MM: "Don't worry, I've GOT you!"

BC: "But I don't WANT to be 'got'! I HATE being saved!"

MM: "What if I promise to let YOU save ME next time?"

BC: "Swear?"

MM: "Swear."

BC: "Then it's okay. THIS ONCE."

...

Tee hee, aren't those independent girls cute? You really have to humor them, though.

Sigh.

So, partial credit for trying, DC. They put a female superhero on the JLA lineup (admittedly, it's pretty much a second-string line-up at this time), and they drew her pretty realistically - I'd buy that she fights crime in that outfit. She gets to do stuff, violent and otherwise, and she gets to be reasonably intelligent most of the time.

On the other hand, they play her for laughs in a fairly offensive way and they clearly have no idea what an actual independent, confident woman would look like, so they made her bratty and undignified instead.

Cat jungle gym

2009-01-19T20:54:00.000-08:00

My Sunday Afternoon, by Tuesday the Cat.

Almost made it to the top. Then lost my hold.

Yah!!

There.

If only that silly human wouldn't keep folding clothes and piling them in my way. Oh there we go.

Success!

(jaime_sama says: I claim bonus geekitude for my Phantom Menace poster in the background there. I really need a Doctor Who poster to go with it though.)

Eleventh Doctor announced.

2009-01-05T18:48:00.000-08:00

Matt Smith. Huh. Well, none of us has ever heard of him, but then David Tennant wasn't exactly a household name in the U.S. before DW either.

Vegan baking

2009-01-02T16:05:00.000-08:00

After receiving fantastic cookbook recommendations from my friend vgnwtch, I have been experimenting with vegan cooking. I am not vegan and don't plan to be, but I am about a 95% vegetarian these days, and I was getting bored with the same old recipes, and scared by any new ones I came across. You do a search for vegetarian recipes on the internet, and see what scary things you come up with. Who could live off those "2 cups of sour cream and 8 ounces of shredded cheese" recipes?? On the other hand, who wants to eat nothing but sprouted grains and raw vegetables? I figured there had to be a middle ground, and creative vegan chefs must have staked it out. This is apparently true, if Isa Chandra Moskowitz is a fair representative. Here is her awesome book.

Since I'm not vegan, I didn't have a problem using typical egg-containing recipes for pancakes and cookies and things, but since I'm enjoying the soups and entrees out of her book so much, I decided to try some vegan baked cookies and cakes too. They are turning out to be yummy, and easy to make.

Top five reasons to love vegan baking:

1. Cutting back on animal products, even if you don't go totally vegan, is better for the environment, a more efficient use of natural resources.

2. Vegan food is generally, though not always, healthier and lower fat. Canola oil is a lot better for you than butter. There are still some gorgeous, rich, vegan desserts that ain't hardly health food, of course.

3. You can still make pancakes (or muffins, or cookies) when your fridge is bare of perishable food. An unopened box of soy milk lives forever in your pantry. Usually you aren't out of baking powder or flour or cornstarch. But you (or I, at least) run out of eggs all the damn time. Eggless recipes are handy at those times.

4. You can taste vegan cookie dough without fear of salmonella.

5. Vegan baked goods can be SO DELICIOUS. :) With a good recipe, you don't miss the eggs in the slightest.

Gender differences

2008-12-07T10:57:00.000-08:00

This post has been floating around in my head for months, so maybe it's time I wrote it.

Once in a while - fairly frequently, actually - I seem to end up in a conversation about the differences between men and women. Almost inevitably, someone in the conversation will suggest the possibility that the difference in question is or might be innate, usually with some armchair evolutionary theory to explain it, like "men are better designed to do x" or "women are better at y because they have to bear children."

This annoys the heck out of me, and I don't always do a good job of explaining why. Of course there are a few sex-related differences that are obviously innate. Women are better at breast-feeding babies. No denying that. But usually the differences that people are talking about are not obvious biological ones. Usually the conversation is about men being "naturally" better at science, or women being "naturally" more in tune to people's emotions. With the polite understanding that "hey, we aren't being sexist, women and men both have their innate, natural strengths and weaknesses, we should learn to value the contributions that both genders can make" et cetera.

This is infuriating, and the polite, warm-fuzzy veneer doesn't make it less infuriating. Let me make an analogy.

Imagine that you and I decide to see who is the faster runner. Before we start, I shackle some iron weights to your ankles. Unsurprisingly, I win the race. Then I say, "Maybe I'm naturally a better runner than you."

I hope your reaction at this point is total outrage. Why in hell do I think I'm "innately" or "naturally" faster, just because I'm faster when you are handicapped by iron weights?

Then I say, "Good grief, calm down. I'm just suggesting that I MIGHT be innately faster. I think it's a matter for empirical study. Wouldn't it be interesting to fund some scientific research, to find out about the possible innate differences in our running ability?"

I hope your reaction at this point is something like, "IRON WEIGHTS, YOU MORON!!" perhaps accompanied by smacking me on the head.

From birth, both boys and girls in our culture are trained like bonsai trees into their socially-acceptable gender roles. Those roles are like the iron weights in the imaginary race. Of course girls are less likely to become scientifically literate, and of course boys are less likely to become emotionally literate. They are overwhelmingly taught which skills are gender appropriate, and actively discouraged from acquiring skills that are not considered appropriate.

Then you get to adulthood, and some genius notices gender differences. "Hey, look, men are more likely to be scientists, while women are more likely to go into care-giving professions. Why would that be? Maybe there is an innate gender difference!"

This is the point where I want to smack said genius in the head. I'm not saying that there ISN'T any innate gender difference in learning different kinds of skills. I'm just saying that there IS an obvious, huge, iron-weights-type explanation for gender difference staring us right in the face. When people wonder about the innate differences, they tend to erase that explanation. They ignore the incredibly strong, oppressive gender socialization that both boys and girls go through, and the hundreds (if not thousands) of years of sexism that is backing it up.

There have been and are plenty of men and women who fight that socialization, and things are getting gradually better, so that these days there is more support for women who want to be logicians or men who want to be good fathers and good husbands. But those social forces are still telling all of us, every day, what a girl is supposed to be like and what a boy is supposed to be like. If we think of the differences between girls and boys as innate, that means that no change is necessary, because no change is possible. We are enabling those oppressive forces that tell us all which of our talents it is okay to develop.

It's not really the empirical studies about innate differences themselves that are annoying me. In those studies, I want a full acknowledgment up front about the massive social forces that create the non-innate (learned) differences. And I want to know how the study plans to distinguish an innate from a learned difference. And I want to know that the people running the study don't believe themselves to be immune from sexism. If they think that they are purely objective on the subject, then their conclusions ought to be suspect. Some people who want these studies done may have suspect motives as well. But it is perfectly possible to run those studies in a responsible way.

What I really want is for lay people - non-scientists - to shut up and stop telling Just So stories about why men have supposedly evolved to be better at X or worse at Y than women, because the effect is to reinforce sexism and give everyone an excuse to be complacent about it.

Torchwood season 1

2008-11-29T15:08:00.000-08:00

So, we finished watching season 1 of Torchwood on DVD. Much like its parent series Doctor Who, it covers the whole gamut between lame and terrific. You have to keep watching just in case the next episode is one of the amazing ones.

I loved Captain Jack in DW so I was looking forward to seeing him again. Sadly, he is really miserable about having been stranded in an unfamiliar century for so long. Poor Jack, the Doctor really never got called on how badly he treated him.

Jack's mood sets the tone for his team too, because just about every other character is miserable, emotionally clueless, isolated, and self-destructive. (Yay! leadership.) I thought for a while that Owen got the prize for dumbest and least ethical team member. By the end of the season, I still think he is the dumbest, but Gwen has become the front-runner for least ethical. Maybe. It's a tough call.

I kinda sound like I don't like the series. But when it's good, it's really good. Two of my favorite episodes are by Chris Chibnall, the series' lead writer: "Cyberwoman" and "Countrycide". Both were really dark, suspenseful, scary stories. Unfortunately Chibnall also wrote the notorious Alien Sex Addict one (I so wish I was kidding) and the finale episode, wherein Owen is stupid (shocking!) but Jack manages to save the day with a nearly-as-stupid fix. Yeah well.

G and I disagreed a bit about "Greeks Bearing Gifts" - I liked it quite a lot, but he wasn't crazy about it. I was impressed that a show that would do "Countrycide" (basically action/horror) would also do an episode that is pretty much completely about people's feelings and thoughts. There is some plot about a telepathy amulet and an alien and all, but the point is pretty much about Tosh feeling like an outsider, which is doubly sad after we just discovered in "Cyberwoman" that Ianto feels excluded from things. Just who are the cool kids on the team if everyone feels left out and marginal?

It's interesting to pay attention to episode writers; the internet has made that a lot easier than it used to be. Chibnall also wrote "42" on DW - the one with Martha on the space ship slowly crashing into the sun...or something? He must have been aiming for that awesome breathless suspenseful mood that he captured so well in "Cyberwoman" and "Countrycide", but somehow "42" falls flat for me. Toby Whithouse who wrote "Greeks Bearing Gifts" also wrote "School Reunion" (the one with Sarah Jane and K9 and villainous ranting from Anthony Stewart Head). "School Reunion" - though more plotty than "Greeks Bearing Gifts" - still allows plenty of space for characters to have feelings. I like that in an action series.

Two of the sort of near-miss episodes of Torchwood are by the same author: "Out of Time" and "Captain Jack Harkness," by Catherine Tregenna. Both are aiming at being really poignant, and they almost get there, but she just goes over the top both times, and loses me. If she dialed it back just a bit, she'd be fantastic.

For the booby prize, I nominate "Combat" as the worst episode of the season. Yeah, even worse than the Alien Sex Fiend episode, and that's saying something. The sad thing is, "Combat" might have been salvaged if it didn't take itself quite so seriously. If they'd acknowledged that they were doing a Fight Club pastiche, like with a "The first rule of Weevil Club..." line, it could have won me back over. But it is totally earnest, grim, and dumb.

I'm still interested in watching season 2. Come on, James Marsters as special guest villain? and Freema Agyeman as special guest Martha? That's enough awesome to get me to watch right there.

Welcome Tuesday

2008-11-02T11:10:00.000-08:00

I don't always do so great at the weekly blog posts. Here we have had our lovely new kitty Tuesday for three weeks and I haven't even put up her picture.

We had the idea for a while that we wanted a cat; our apartment complex changed their rules so that pets are now allowed, but we decided that we would wait until the end of our hamsters' lives before bringing in any predator pets. Since Lily was our last hamster, we decided now was a good time.

Tuesday was named by her previous owner, but we like the name. She's about 2 1/2 years old, and is playful and friendly, with excellent manners. She doesn't try to steal your food, or chew plants, or scratch us, or pee outside the litter box, and she only claws the furniture a tiny bit. She does love to get into closets and poke around. Maybe she just wants to climb up to the game shelf.

She likes to sleep on the back of the couch, and also sits there when we are watching TV, like she is watching the show over our shoulders.

She will also play a close approximation of fetch with her beloved toy mouse. I swear. Gazza has some video evidence of this over at his blog here. (The video's a bit dark; we'll have to try to get some footage during the daytime.)

In other news, happy belated Halloween:

P.S. I hope all the Doctor Who fans have heard David Tennant's news...

Let It Be

2008-10-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

So in the past few months, I have been discovering the Beatles. I know. The fact that we are just now watching Babylon 5 is one thing... at least there we are only about one decade out of touch with the cutting edge. Nevertheless, I'm now experiencing my own personal Beatlemania. We got the White Album a few months back, and also the first volume of the Anthology, both of which are amazing. I read a book collecting Beatles journalism, and finally a few weeks back, picked up Let It Be. I haven't written about music much, but I thought I'd try to make sense of my obsessive fan-girly love for this album by going through it song by song.

A blues influence is there throughout all of the Beatles music I've listened to, but Let It Be (henceforth LIB) frequently sounds more like blues than rock - if such a distinction is possible. It's like the Beatles got bored with being a rock band and decided to transform themselves effortlessly and brilliantly into a Chicago-style (meaning, electric guitars) blues band. We knew from the White Album how many different styles the Beatles could take on, but I was still surprised by LIB.

All of Lennon's and McCartney's songs are credited to both writers, but the consensus opinion seems to be that by this stage in their careers that credit was more or less a polite fiction. They weren't getting along well enough nor going in the same directions musically by the late 60s. Below, I will credit the songs based on the opinion of the Ever-Reliable Internet, along with the common-sense reasoning that one is a bit more likely to sing lead on one's own songs than not.

Learning about the shape of the Beatles' career and listening to Let It Be gives you such an intense impression of what 1969-1970 were like for them (right before the band broke up). Paul still had hopes and plans for the band, and gradually, heartbreakingly, realized that none of the others were up for it. Once you have that dynamic in mind, it's hard not to see it in nearly every song.

"Two of Us" (McCartney) Wikipedia sayeth that this song sometimes addresses Linda (Paul's wife-to-be) and other times addresses John. It is a gorgeous song about an intense and affectionate relationship (romantic or otherwise). My take is that these lyrics at least are addressed to John: "You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead."

"Dig a Pony" (Lennon) Don't ask me what the pony is about. :) The "Yoko broke up the band" theory is clearly an unfair over-simplification, but lord, you can see why people thought (still think?) it was true. "All I want is you/Everything has got to be just like you want it to"? Whew. "All" he wants?? John sure sounds like he is choosing Yoko over the Beatles.

"Across the Universe" (Lennon) A gorgeous song about the experience of meditation, how thoughts and emotions come and go, but "Nothin's gonna change my world." Some lyrics are a Sanskrit mantra. This is the only song that, when stuck in my head endlessly, has ever had a calming effect. This song was written earlier, 1968, but included on this album apparently to compensate for the otherwise-sparse presence of John. Though still formally a Beatle in 1969, he wasn't putting much effort into the band, apparently.

"I Me Mine" (Harrison) This song comes out of George's interest in Indian culture and Hindu philosophy, and the challenge of letting go of the ego. I know that, but doesn't it also hint at the mood someone really sick of listening to people fight all the time? "All I can hear/I me mine I me mine I me mine."

"Dig It" (Credited to all four Beatles) Only a snippet of a longer jam session made it onto the album. Somehow I've got to get a hold of the movie Let It Be and hear more. (At the request of the surviving Beatles, the movie has not been released on DVD.) The snippet we do have sounds a bit influenced by Bob Dylan's improvised-sounding talking blues, like "I Shall Be Free."

"Let It Be" (McCartney) Paul says this one is about his mother. The mood of the song is about resignation or consolation.

"Maggie Mae" (Traditional, arrangement credited to all four Beatles) This is a goofy, fun take on a song that is apparently the unofficial anthem of Liverpool. Could represent a moment of nostalgia? It almost sounds spontaneous, but if there is an arrangement they copyrighted, then I suppose it was planned to sound that way. :)

"I've Got a Feeling" Teh Internet sayeth that this is a combination of two unfinished songs, one by McCartney and one by Lennon. It does sound like a sort of mash-up, now that they mention it, and the lead vocals get traded off between the two singers, almost like dueling songs.

"One After 909" This is the first official release of this song, but apparently it was written in the late 50s (credited Lennon-McCartney) and was performed live in concerts, but they never got a recording that they were happy releasing until LIB (1969). In the first volume of the Beatles Anthology CDs, there are a couple of early attempts at recordings that break down in different places. Nice that they finally released a version; it's like the band came full circle here.

"The Long and Winding Road" (McCartney) Another sad song from Paul. The lyric "Don't leave me standing here" is pretty powerful in the context of the Beatles thinking about breaking up. I'm curious to hear the Let It Be...Naked version now, which is supposed to have a version a lot closer to Paul's original intention.

"For You Blue" (Harrison) I love the straight-up blues sound on this track. John plays slide guitar (cheered on adorably by George, "Go, Johnny, go!" & "Elmore James got nothing on this, baby.")

"Get Back" You know, I think I've just heard this one too many times on the radio, so it sounds a bit tired to me now. DJs need to spread the love around to some other songs. ;)