This Tuesday Tune Two-Fer’s all about whatever makes you happy
There’s a new song out by the Go! Team, from their upcoming album Get Up Sequences Part One. It’s called “A Bee Without Its Sting,” and it’s joyful.
I’ve got to admit that it feels a little bit like Go! Team videos are being generated by a neural network at this point: they’re a mish-mash of Cooper Black, video and photocopier artifacts, film footage of bodegas and other city scenes, and people playing instruments in front of a green screen. But I don’t care a bit, since it’s all such a positive energy that I don’t even feel self-conscious using phrases like “positive energy.”
The only thing that could improve it, of course, is replacing the Sting. Here’s the Tantric Dad himself singing “Little Something” with Melody “What If Eartha Kitt but Super-White?” Gardot. I wish I could get past my snobbery about music like this, because I am almost-50-enough and white enough to genuinely like it, but I still can’t jettison the idea that I’m supposed to be at least a little bit embarrassed for liking it. This seems like music that affluent straight white people in their mid-50s have sex to. Like right after the end of the Cialis commercial, they get out of the tubs, open the doors of their Lexus parked nearby, and just crank this shit out while they start doin’ it. Happy Tuesday!
Pros Mentioned a couple of things that I’d either forgotten about, or had never known about on account of my “missing” teen years not going to Florida. Includes some snippets from first-hand interviews.
Cons Badly written and sloppily edited to the point of distraction. Typos and run-on sentences which are worse because of lack of punctuation and misspellings or the infamous misused words or outright made-up words that I tried to ignore until each one dug directly into the base of my spine like an irritant. Just copies lists from somewhere; a lot of it reads like marketing material and park maps (which Korkis might have written or helped write?) Jumps between hand-waving descriptions and then weirdly specific details, as if the author were copy/pasting from a news article. Weird omissions, like If You Had Wings and Dreamflight. No photos or, in many cases, even a synopsis of the show or attraction, so people who never saw the original will be unable to get a clear picture of it, and people who did see the original will find little of nostalgic value in such a cursory description.
Why Bother Reviewing It? After a couple dozen pages, I thought I’d just finish this one quietly and move on without comment. What could possibly be gained by trashing a low-cost, small-press, light book that in Kindle form, isn’t even that expensive? But the more I read, the more it annoyed me, because I felt like I’d paid to grade a high school paper from a student who’d written the whole thing the night before. There are lots of people who’ve been doing diligent work collecting documentation, interviews, and ephemera from the history of the parks, and you can tell it’s done as a labor of love. This just felt opportunistic, like the tourist trap shops selling knock-off Mickey Mouse T-shirts along International Drive.
Summary Even if, like me, you’re desperate to read anything about Walt Disney World, pass on this one.
The new Loki series is a victory for “genre fiction,” since it’s full of weird stuff that’s not that weird anymore.
Pretty early in the first episode of Loki, there’s a brief scene where he’s forced to consider whether he’s a robot without being aware of it. I like the scene because it’s got such good line reads from both actors. More than that, though, it’s a good example of how the MCU acknowledges the absurdity of the whole premise of the MCU: trying to translate decades of comic book weirdness into “mainstream” movies and television.
I liked the first episode of the series a lot, but there wasn’t the same “electricity” I felt from the novelty of watching WandaVision. And I don’t think that’s a criticism! It’s a sign that 10+ years of gradually pushing out the borders of what’s “too weird for Hollywood” has paid off.
There’s so much great stuff going on in this series: the set direction, art direction, costume design, prop design, a fantastic retro animated sequence, some imaginative VFX with various time doorways and what is essentially an “exposition projector,” not to mention great casting including the always-welcome Pillboy. (Eugene Cordero, who’s just great).
And yet, I don’t have much to say about it! It’s not that novel anymore; its presence alone isn’t that remarkable. Which means I don’t have to consider the changing level of respectability of genre fiction in the mainstream, parallels to aesthetics of the Fallout series, how ideas established in comics translate to live action, any of it. I can just enjoy watching it. (Of course, I realize I don’t have to write about any of this stuff for free on a personal blog; I just am unable to turn off that portion of my brain for some reason).
The first episode was full of moments and design decisions that would’ve drawn attention to themselves just a few years ago, but now it just feels like it all simply works without comment.
Also, I was surprised at the end of the episode. We’ve known about the premise of this series forever, so in retrospect, the revelation probably should’ve been obvious. “Who’s the villain in a Loki series?” But I didn’t see it coming at all, which I take as a sign that I was actually watching the show, instead of being in detached cinema studies/media analysis mode. I wasn’t thinking about it in terms of metatext, but just as a story.
Which is how most of the source comics work, now that the 90s are over and there’s less of a trend of high-profile comics stories about comics stories. It feels like we can stop defending genre fiction and justifying genre fiction, and just enjoy genre fiction. And appreciate a Marvel series that finally seems to be embracing the Marvel aesthetic.
Friday link post featuring Panic! at the Bluetooth Speaker
I imagine that most of the people reading this blog will have already seen it, but just in case: Panic put out a video with lots more info about their upcoming Playdate handheld videogame machine, with pre-orders starting in July. Mentioned in the “Season One Games” section of that video is my own game, “Sasquatchers,” which makes sense because it’s one of the Season One games. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it on here as it gets closer to release, because for such a small game, it’s taken up a surprising amount of my life over the past several years.
Congrats to Christa Mrgan and the rest of the team there at Panic for managing to get across so much of (what I think is) the personality and core appeal of the project. I’m a fan of the company and just the whole notion of wanting to do something weird and different, and to do it well and responsibly. Now I have to find out how to get one of those audio docks for it, because the Poolsuite FM screen with 2-color dithered video of a plane running in the Mac classic interface as a music player triggered intense feelings of need I wasn’t aware I even had.
If you don’t have patience for the whole update but would rather see an extremely Portlandish 2-minute ad describing what it is, that’s available separately. (It’s at the end of that update video as well).
The company’s been adamant about encouraging development on the device to anyone who wants to make something for it, a philosophy underscored by this video. On top of releasing a lowest-possible-barrier-to-entry development system called Pulp, they’ve pledged to make the SDK public and already released a 50-minute video with Steven Frank demonstrating how to use the SDK to make an app that runs on the device.
Plus, they’ve been running a developer preview, to expand the number of people testing out the SDK beyond just the devs in Season One. There’s been some really imaginative stuff already hinted at; you can get a good sample from Arisa’s Twitter feed, since she’s been handling developer relations for the Playdate project. One of my favorites from seeing screenshots and previews is Dustin Mierau’s “Playmaker,” which seems to nail the whole aesthetic of the Playdate and its philosophy of creative exploration.
Synopsis After covering the World Memory Championships as a journalist, Foer spends a year learning about the history of memory-training techniques, our understanding of how memory works, and training with some of the other competitors, before competing in the championships himself.
Pros It’s difficult to imagine being more committed to a story about memory competitions. Does a good job of balancing personal memoir, coverage of the events and their competitors, and deep dives into the history of mnemonics and the current neurological and psychological studies. Gives an overview of techniques like memory palaces and mnemonic systems, along with explanations of why the location- and imagery-based techniques are more effective than rote memorization. Includes interviews with people with remarkable memories — either positive or negative — that are conducted with as much compassion as objective interest. Maintains an appropriate level of skepticism about his interview subjects and the entire endeavor as a whole.
Cons Reads more like a collection of magazine articles than a cohesive book, which is great for spending time with a topic but not so great for pacing. Little practical information for learning the techniques yourself. Hints at larger practical benefits for all of the exercises that keep them from being just a stunt, but those passages are a little more vaguely hand-waving than the rest. Reading the book has made me less encouraged to try out any of the systems, since the thought of having to think of elaborate imagery to remember the name of a person I’ve just met, while they’re still talking to me and expecting me to respond, sounds more stressful than just admitting I’ve already forgotten their name.
Verdict Emphasizes some interesting ideas: that memory is more about indexing information than simply storing it, and the ways in which memory and intelligence are interconnected. (Remembering isn’t the same as learning, but it helps learning because it gives us more frames of reference to make incoming information more “sticky.”) But I was left feeling a little disappointed that none of it seems to have much real-world practical benefit.
Re-thinking some of my own condescending opinions about Ray Bradbury’s work
I’ve been thinking a lot about Fahrenheit 451 and its surprisingly nuanced take on censorship. The kerosene-filled salamander trucks are the most dramatic, but not the most unsettlingly relevant image in the book. Instead, it’s the society that slowly and gradually gives in to our own fears and assumptions to the point where we think the firemen are a good idea in the first place.
I already wrote about Ray Bradbury’s Coda, which was included as an afterword to a 1979 edition of the book. Searching for the full text of his essay online, I could only find the occasional personal blog post, and then a full copy of it included in an obituary of Bradbury on the Cato Institute’s website. Which I won’t link to, because F the Cato Institute.
I don’t know what Bradbury’s specific and personal politics were, because I get the impression he was adamant about letting his work speak for itself. (An idea that seems forcefully underlined by his Coda). I only just started reading Bradbury’s work for the first time in the past couple of years — going roughly in order of “famousness” — and I’ve been struck by how he has a clear and undeniably specific voice, which he uses to describe concepts that are universal.
It’s that combination of universal concepts plus early-to-mid-20th-century-American mindset which initially left me with the overall impression that his works are “brilliant, but dated.” To me, they’ve seemed to communicate ideas that are immediately and crucially relevant to 21st century liberal progressives, despite their being shaped by the mindset of a period in American history that so many of us are now recognizing needs to be dismantled and un-learned.
I imagine it’s that same universality that lets people at a well-funded libertarian “think tank” interpret it as a “got ’em!” dismissal of social progressivism and inclusivity as assaults on free speech driven by frivolous special interests.
Bradbury’s Coda to Fahrenheit 451 suggests — insists, really — that neither of those takes is the right one. Except I’m a little bit more right than they are, and here’s why.
A pre-update for a new videogame console! A maybe-BDSM-cult-driven series of computer games! A new land at Disneyland!
Panic has been working for quite some time on making the Playdate, a handheld videogame device that I think you should all be interested in, for reasons. Today they made a pre-announcement that a video update is coming next Tuesday, with some more news about the device, the games, and how you can pre-order it later on.
Aaron Reed’s 50 Years of Text Games series is just going to be a constant fixture of my link posts, since they’ve all been fascinating. This week’s is about an adventure game called Silverwolf and really, the bonkers story about the people who may or may not have developed it, and why.
A YouTuber named Kelsea Dyer made a video exploring the new Dragon Quest Island in Japan, and it looks like an interesting attempt to translate as much of the experience of the JRPGs to a real-world setting as they could. It looks more screen-heavy than I would’ve liked, personally, but the twist of traveling to random encounters along the path, then back to the village for shopping and treasure-hunting, seems like it would add some fun interactivity to it. The official site has more info, assuming you can either read Japanese or are better at finding language settings than I am.
The Avengers Campus opens at California Adventure this weekend, and Nerdist’s video is a pretty good overview. My unsolicited take: the available space and the mostly-real-world setting both make it seem a little, well, underwhelming when seen on video, but it’d be stupid to pass judgment until I’ve spent more time in the land. Even Galaxy’s Edge was unimpressive at first, until I got to spend more time there and get a sense for how all the place-making works together. The rides themselves are just a small part of it; I’ve already seen that from riding Mission: Breakout and having a dance party break out outside the queue, which made the whole experience seem 10x more fun. I get a sense that the emphasis on characters and smaller details are going to do the heavy lifting of making the place feel exciting.
My favorite touch that I’ve seen so far: the homage to Adventure Thru Inner Space inside the Pym’s Test Kitchen, using pretzels instead of Omnimovers. And I can’t imagine ever getting tired of seeing that acrobatic Spider-Man being flung over a building.
Why I’m finally giving up on the campaign to give Chick-fil-a the benefit of the doubt
For a decade now — you can tell how old posts are when the images didn’t survive a change in web hosts — I’ve been writing posts about Chick-fil-a‘s role as The Heel in the fight against marriage equality, stupid attempts to drum up outrage, and my own clumsy attempts to explain how I don’t think we should fall for it.
For all this time, though, there’s been one thing I’ve never been quite able to settle on: how much am I willing to make this a hill I’m going to die on?
I mean, if people want to feel better by boycotting a fast food restaurant, what’s the problem? If there’s one thing I’ve felt consistently adamant about, it’s that people should be free to choose how to spend their money, for whatever reason, or for no reason at all.
And I certainly don’t have any sympathy for the Cathy family, especially Dan Cathy, and it’s nonsense to even hint that their freedom of speech or religious freedom might be at risk. Cathy is the epitome of the rich white guy who refuses to keep his mouth shut. He and the company that made him super-wealthy have had over a decade of opportunities to make things right. People have even tried to spin him as a case study for how we can all get along despite our differences. But instead, he and the company have made the barest of non-committal statements, and then the moment the heat’s off of them, they go right back to their same old bullshit. Screw that guy, and his whole damn family, who’ve made billions of dollars off of peanut oil and neoconservatism.
Ultimately, the problem I’ve had but have been unable to articulate is that I hate seeing smart people get sucked into a stupid, manufactured culture war. If I think it’s idiotic for Mike Huckabee to stage the most American South version of a protest, where people buy chicken sandwiches to stand up for freedom and stick it to the homos, then it seems hypocritical to cheer on anyone acting like their decision not to buy chicken sandwiches is some kind of bold statement.
Starting Pride month with some well-meaning complaints about some popular symbols of inclusivity
It’s the beginning of Pride month — it’s always seemed odd that Pride is in mid-summer, since we all know that Pride goes before the Fall — and I’m choosing to complain about two symbols of inclusiveness and acceptance: the new Pride flags, and indicating pronouns in online profiles.
This may seem at best unnecessary, and that’s because it is. Everything I’m talking about has been done with the best of intentions, and it is short-term help for a real problem. The equality movement has progressed to the point where people like me — white, middle class, comfortably conforming to the binary gender I was assigned at birth — can feel relatively safe and welcomed in most of the places we’d want to live and travel. But those benefits haven’t been distributed equally, and there are too many people who are still marginalized within an already-marginalized community.
Also, I don’t have any illusions that my opinions are going to change what other people are doing, and I don’t want it to. But as symbols become more ubiquitous, I think it’s important to keep in mind what exactly they mean and why they’re necessary. It feels like more people — and opportunistic companies — are treating them as completely positive, to the point where it’s becoming as innocuous as the “Have a Nice Day” smiley face. Innocuous quickly becomes meaningless, and hides the fact that these are short-term patches over a more systemic problem that we’re not doing a good job of addressing.
Series A contemporary continuation of the James Bond series from authors chosen by Ian Fleming’s estate
Synopsis Set just a couple of weeks after the events of Goldfinger, Bond is assigned to compete in a deadly Grand Prix to counter a Russian assassination plot, eventually leading to a diabolical plot from SMERSH and the mysterious multimillionaire Jason Sin, to disrupt America’s space program!
Pros Nails the voice of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels. It’s been decades since I’ve read any of them, but this is exactly how I remember them. Contains previously unpublished material by Fleming, written for a Bond TV series that never happened, and even after reading Horowitz’s afterword, I’m still not able to figure out exactly which parts are his and which are Fleming’s. Like everything else I’ve read by Horowitz, it’s engaging and fun to read throughout; he can somehow make the slower moments as compelling as the exciting ones and make the whole thing flow. Steadfastly and apologetically set in the 1950s, but still brings contemporary sensibilities to the plotting, without feeling like a parody or a modernized adaptation. Goes to locations and puts Bond in situations that I haven’t seen before. Good character resolution for Pussy Galore. Has a character named Harry Johnson, which is hilarious. Great title for a Bond novel, although it ends up being used in the book just a couple times too often.
Cons Nails the voice of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels. There’s a reason that it’s been decades since I’ve read any of them. If you’re turned off by casual misogyny and xenophobia, you’ve come to the wrong place reading a Bond novel, but what I’d forgotten were the run-on sentences, and Fleming’s bizarre, almost Kardashian-like obsession with brands. The “supervillain reveals his entire plot” monologue is a staple of Bond stories, so it’s not the inclusion that feels off here, but that it actually makes the villain more sympathetic, not less. Feels pretty low-stakes for a Bond adventure, and the action set pieces were on the smaller side; I kept wondering whether Horowitz were subconsciously bringing his TV-screenwriter frugality to a Bond novel.
Verdict I doubt this would convert anyone over to the James Bond franchise, but it feels to me like a solid continuation of the series. Makes me even more convinced that the movies should’ve set Daniel Craig’s version of Bond in the 50s instead of trying to keep them current. I think the stories are so much more interesting when they can embrace the idea that Bond has a very specific sensibility from a very fictionalized version of a very specific time period, instead of trying to keep the “women want him, men want to be him” idea going for decades past its prime.
