Roger O Green

Cultural engagement

I happened to have gone to a panel at FantaCon this month with Steve Bissette, Kris Gilpin and Dennis Daniel, all of whom used to swap bootleg horror films, fifth-generation recording dubbed in German or Dutch. THEY are ecstatic that those films are now available in a nice Criterion collection.

The cover of the September 20/27, 2013 Entertainment Weekly, its Fall TV Preview, says “get the scoop on 119 shows, PLUS the best new series.” If I need a reminder that the medium has diffused, that’ll do it.

Yet on two successive episodes of the Bat Segundo Show podcast, host Ed Champion declares that there is an “American epidemic of gravitating to mainstream culture in an age of limitless choice.” He and guest Kiese Laymon discuss “why America is terrified of rich and variegated cultural engagement.” Then Champion and Alissa Quart dissect “how outsiders and iconoclasts have been appropriated by institutional forces. Why have we shifted to a culture hostile to original voices? Why is it all about being liked?”

I found myself arguing and agreeing with the dialogues in about equal measure. On one hand, there’s no doubt that a lot of the “outsiders” get co-opted. And there’s the “you’re an idiot if you’re not watching this” meme that Jaquandor discussed, in this case, about Breaking Bad. He’s seen two episodes more than I have and is disinclined not to see any more, which SHOULD be OK, but apparently is not, at least for some tastemakers. (Hey, I haven’t seen either Game of Thrones (and won’t) or Downton Abbey (Bought the Wife the DVDs, so I probably will – eventually).

On the other hand, when there are so many movies, so many TV shows, and I have a finite amount of time and money, why CAN’T I at least look at Rotten Tomatoes, and get a sense of the critical mass of movie reviewers? Maybe I WILL go see that movie with the 12% positive reviews, though probably not.

There was this whole argument on one of those podcasts about finding the obscure films, it seems, for the sake of seeking them out, proving one is “cutting edge” or “outre”; it all felt a bit affected to me. I happened to have gone to a panel at FantaCon this month with Steve Bissette, Kris Gilpin, and Dennis Daniel, all of whom used to swap bootleg horror films, fifth-generation recording dubbed in German or Dutch. THEY are ecstatic that those films are now available in a nice Criterion collection.

Speaking of Mr. Byzantium Shores, he called BS on the Louis CK rant about smartphones. He may be correct about the inauthentic specifics, yet I found it oddly affecting theater. I think a commenter describing smartphones enabling “a sort of rude, in-the-bubble behavior” feels right. Or maybe it’s just my reaction to the people on the bus I see every day, about 2/3s of which are totally detached from the person sitting three feet from them makes me more than a bit melancholy.

Going back to that EW issue, one of the “best new shows” this season is supposed to be the FOX comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Our local social media maven posted one of those flippant comments on Facebook, “Where have all the sitcoms gone?” to which a guy noted that he was watching one at that moment, Brooklyn Nine-Nine. She wrote back, “Isn’t that a drama, and an hour?” Well, no, a simple Google search would reveal that was a new “ensemble comedy about what happens when a talented, but carefree, detective [Andy Samberg] and his diverse group of colleagues get a new captain [Andre Braugher of Homicide: Life on the Street] with a lot to prove.” I thought his information (which I augmented) required an acknowledgment at least to him, but I guess that’s just my projection.

Oh, and I can tell you that many of the sitcoms are now on the Disney Channel. I’ve seen several, none of which are particularly good.
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Lots of folks are upset that the Emmys had an individual tribute for, as one person put it, “that filthy drug addict Cory Monteith” by “that no talent Jane Lynch” (I actually read that, naturally on Facebook) while not doing so for Jack Klugman, who was one of my favorite actors, or for Larry Hagman. I thought Mark Evanier addressed this rather well, which is that these things are never “fair.”

The Lydster, Part 114: Anita

She went online and got the lyrics to ‘America’, her first favorite song, and then “A Boy Like That.’

I mentioned that the family saw an Albany High School production of West Side Story this spring. Since then, the Daughter has been listening to the movie soundtrack, which pleases me, since it was #2 on my favorite albums of the 1960s.

More specifically, I burned her a copy of my CD so that, if she loses it, I’ll still have it. I’ve done this with some 1959 rock ‘n’ roll compilation and the Beatles’ albums A Hard day’s Night and Help. She’s been playing WSS before she goes to sleep quite often of late.

The Daughter has been particularly enthralled by the character of Anita, the leading Shark girl. In the program, we saw Bryana Greer play Anita, and she was the best performer, we all thought, in a quite good cast.

So she went online and got the lyrics to ‘America’, her first favorite song, and then “A Boy Like That.’ She hasn’t yet figured out the “I Have A Love’ duet that Anita has with Maria, but give it time.

And she HAS been asked to be called Anita, not all the time, but when she’s “in character.”

I have NO idea where she gets this music/theater interest.

Random Memory of My Father: Savannah, GA

I’m sure it didn’t hurt my father’s perception that we hung out with three of my female colleagues.

For my job, I used to go to the national conference of our association every year (far less so this century.) In the fall of 1998, the event was in Savannah, Georgia, this Atlantic coastal city that had a certain old-world charm. Among other things, it was a walkable locale with a sense of its history.

My father, who was living in Charlotte, NC at the time, decided to drive down and visit me. It was about 260 miles and 4.5 hours away, but when he suggested it, I was all for it. I had come down on a Saturday, and while there was a mixer on Sunday, the conference did not start in earnest until Monday; it was just cheaper at that time to fly down a day earlier, even considering the hotel costs.

Well, my father LOVED this place. He had never been there before but talked about wanting to relocate to the city. I’ll admit that I too was taken by the locale, whereas I found Atlanta, which I had visited three years earlier, sprawling and oppressive. I’m sure it didn’t hurt my father’s perception that we hung out with three of my female colleagues, one from my immediate office, plus Donna from Long Island, and Kellie from upstate, with whom he could playfully flirt.

The BIG THING in Savannah at that time was that Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the 1994 book by John Berendt, and the 1997 film, directed by Clint Eastwood, were set in the city. I had seen neither, though, oddly, I owned the movie soundtrack.

The five of us went to a bunch of historic houses, ate at a couple nice restaurants – it was probably the first time I had key lime pie – and generally had a great time. Then my dad and I just talked for an hour or more at the end of each of the two days he was there.

He left Monday morning. That period may have been the single best time I ever had with my father; within two years, he was dead. So I treasure that trip, and those people who hung out with him, even though I’ve totally lost track of Kellie.

Two songs about Savannah – Hard-Hearted Hannah – Ella Fitzgerald – for a time, I dubbed one of my friends as Hannah. Don’t know why; she wasn’t hard-hearted at all.
Jug Band Music – Lovin’ Spoonful

My father would have turned 87 tomorrow.

K is for Known As, Formerly

What changes in nomenclature have YOU noticed in your lifetime?

I’m always interested in things that used to be called something else.

Retronyms are words that evolve because technology changes. There used to be things called guitars; then electric guitars were invented, so guitars became acoustic guitars. Clocks became analog clocks when digital clocks came on the scene. Before minicomputers appeared in the 1970s, all computers were what are now called mainframe computers.

Then there are political reasons for change. “Even old New York was once New Amsterdam, ” the song ‘Istanbul (Not Constantinople)’ tells us; there are thousands of changes like this; in my lifetime, many took place in Africa with decolonization. After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Idlewild Airport became JFK; Cape Canaveral became Cape Kennedy, but, interestingly, changed back!

One singer changed his name from Prince to the glyph above back to Prince, which is way easier to say. Did you know the actor Albert Brooks’ given name was Albert Einstein? People change their names for all sorts of reasons – convenience, religious purposes (Lew Alcindor to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, for one).

Racial/ethnic designations seem often to be in flux. Is it American Indian or Native American or First Nation? People in my lifetime used to actually refer to people with Down’s syndrome as Mongolian idiots, which managed to be both racist and inaccurate all at once.

Changes in the workplace mean that planes have flight attendants, not stewardesses. Similarly, there are firefighters and police officers instead of firemen and policemen.

Do not underestimate the power of commerce to change words. In the old days, there were used car salesmen, who were among the least trusted people in the US because of their shenanigans, such as fixing odometers. Now there are no used cars in the nation; they are now “pre-owned vehicles.”

How do you sell dolls to boys? Why you call them action figures. That’s what Hasbro did in 1964 with the introduction of the GI Joe ~~doll~~ action figure.

Every time I hear the phrase “window treatment,” I think someone is going to tint the glass or something. In fact, that’s the term for shades, drapes, and the like.

What changes in nomenclature have YOU noticed in your lifetime?

ABC Wednesday – Round 13

300: teenage wasteland

Anderson Cooper mocked, “First of all, how lame is it that someone tweeted the 518?”

If you live around the Albany area, you probably know the story, but for the rest of you: former National Football League player Brian Holloway’s home in Stephentown, rural Rensselaer County, was broken into by about 300 kids and used as a party house on August 31, 2013. Holloway was in Florida at the time and these kids trashed the place, with graffiti on the walls and the like.

Holloway started some organization and website called Help Me Save 300, where he explained what happened, and most notably, posted the tweets and photos that the teens themselves posted AT THE TIME of their activity. He said he wanted to reach out to the young people and show them “there are better ways to spend their time than drinking, drugs, and vandalism.”

This has led some of the parents of the kids who left “urine-stained carpets, broken windows, damaged walls” to threaten to sue Holloway because he posted their pictures on his website, which, of course, has received appropriate local pushback.

What exactly is Holloway raising money for? (There’s no corporation in the state of New York called Help Me Save 300; I checked.)

It is an icky story. And I can’t help wonder if 30 black and/or Hispanic kids had broken into someone’s house if there would be as much “kids will be kids” reaction among some.

Naturally, there’s usually a silly side to these tales: CNN’s Anderson Cooper mocked, “First of all, how lame is it that someone tweeted the 518?” 518 is the local area code. First I recall someone touting their area code in that fashion was Ruben Studdard on the second season of American Idol, giving a shoutout to the 205. So Anderson is gratuitously making fun of upstate New York; guess one must find the levity where one can.