I blame Miley Cyrus and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

I have a reasonably large vocabulary, I suppose. Some words, particularly newer ones, apparently elude me, however. Twerking and selfie have been added to the Oxford Dictionary of English recently, and I had been largely oblivious to both terms.

Oh, I had vaguely heard of twerking, when some white female celeb was accused of doing it on a video – I no longer know (or particularly care) who – a few months (or years?) ago. But it’s like the name of the second person I meet at a party where I know no one; it slips off into the ether of my mind. It wasn’t until the infamous Miley Cyrus incident on some awards show recently, that I don’t watch but got lots of coverage, did it finally stick. Oh, yeah, twerking: OK, got it.

Whereas I had never, to my recollection, heard, or especially seen, the word “selfie”, meaning “pouty self-portrait typically taken with a smartphone” until I read the complaint about the Rolling Stone cover of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev being a selfie. Since that time, the term has become ubiquitous in my universe. I see it EVERYWHERE now, even in Chuck Miller’s blog. Geraldo Rivera took selfies, which I hope the NSA has captured. I’m sure my ignorance is a function, in part, of not having a smartphone. We have a digital camera, but I understand this trend to be a slightly different animal, gestalt-wise.

A buddy of mine suggested that her ignorance of twerk and selfie “sounds like a sexual hang-up, not a problem of limited vocabulary.” That MAY be true of me as well, especially in the case of the former, although realizing now that Anthony Weiner was taking selfies, maybe the latter as well.

Twerking seems to be in that straight line from Elvis the Pelvis to The Twist to the lambada, plus a bunch of other stuff I wasn’t paying attention to. (You probably DON’T, I mean DO NOT, want to watch this Twerking To Classical Music Via HUFFPOST. Told you so.)

Other new words:

“Dappy – silly, disorganised or lacking concentration: never heard of it. Is it a mix of daffy and happy?
“Digital detox – time spent away from Facebook and Twitter: never heard of this either, though the phenomenon of unplugging I was aware of.
“Girl crush – an intense and typically non-sexual admiration felt by one girl for another”: Is this the female equivalent of bromance? Pretty lame term, I must say.
“Vom – to be sick”: What? It looks like a word already in use, only a syllable longer. Ah, this story explains that it “saves two characters when twittering. Or tweeting. Whatever.”

[Yes, I have stolen this article. But at least it is from myself.]

Race and casting for films

Some groups believe that minority actors are still underrepresented in film

SamuraiFrog wrote: “A lot of people have expressed the sentiment that casting Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness is whitewashing; taking an ethnic character and casting a white actor in the role. My question, though: is it, actually?”

I had some thoughts even before addressing the core question. One is that I feel really lucky that I don’t read whatever sites go on kvetching about this stuff. Not that it’s not a legitimate source of conversation, but that too many of the participants, I’ve discovered, are REALLY ANNOYING.

More substantially, one can’t really talk about the specific example without talking at least briefly about the broader topic.

Most European and American movies from the beginning, featured white folks, often in roles that, arguably could have been played by a black man (Orson Welles as Othello in the 1952 iteration) or Asian (various roles in the Charlie Chan movies). When I saw Rita Moreno on CBS Sunday Morning a few months ago, she talked about being typecast as that fiery ethnic.

Now that we are in a more presumably enlightened age, when films are cast, there is an attempt to make the canvas more diverse. This, BTW, is not just fairer, it’s good economics, with minority kids having characters they might relate to. Marvel Comics universe in the 1960s was mostly white, so when they make films of their franchise players, some supporting characters that had been white aren’t anymore. A black Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan), the villain in the Daredevil film, e.g.

Indeed, as I’ve mentioned, my old blogging buddy Greg Burgas used to play this recast movie game. I was often finding women or minorities to play roles historically associated with white men, to correct the historical institutional racism and sexism.

Still, some groups believe that minority actors are still underrepresented in film. When a clearly ethnic role is cast with a white actor (Johnny Depp as the American Indian role of Tonto in the 2013 Lone Ranger movie, e.g.), the charge of “whitewashing” comes up.

The character Khan Noonien Singh, played by the late, great Ricardo Montalbán was not specifically a Hispanic character. Arguably, it’s an Asian name, though, with all the interracial (and interspecies) marriages in the future, the look may have changed by then.

I’m always willing to note when things are wrong, yet I’m just not feeling this as a real issue. Still, I really appreciate Mr. Frog actually thinking about these issues in an insightful way.

Please don’t sue me, Mr. Faulkner!

The court interpreted the inclusion of the paraphrased quote in Midnight in Paris as actually helping Faulkner and the market value of Requiem if it had any effect at all.

From 1949; per Wikipedia description, image is in the public domain

I missed this initially, but a few months ago, a federal judge in Mississippi nixed a lawsuit brought by the heirs of William Faulkner. In dispute was the claim that “Woody Allen’s 2011 film ‘Midnight in Paris’ [had] improperly used one of William Faulkner’s most famous lines.” The librarian in me was pleased with the outcome but ticked that the suit was filed in the first place.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” Faulkner wrote in the book, ‘Requiem for a Nun.’ “In the movie, actor Owen Wilson, says: ‘The past is not dead. Actually, it’s not even past. You know who said that? Faulkner. And he was right. I met him too. I ran into him at a dinner party.'”

Read the judge’s ruling. The Faulkner heirs claimed violation of copyright law but SONY Pictures, the defendant, claimed the Fair Use provision in the law, and, “alternatively, argued that the use of a quote was non-infringing under the de minimis doctrine (essentially a taking too small to rise to the level of infringement).”

Factor 1: Purpose and Character. These were considered quite different media and intent (comic film v. serious book).

Factor 2: Nature of the Copyrighted Work. While the book is subject to copyright protection, the movie was “transformative,” i.e., significantly altered from the original.

Factor 3: Substantiality of the Portion Used in Relation to the Copyrighted Work as a Whole. “At issue, in this case, is whether a single line from a full-length novel singly paraphrased and attributed to the original author in a full-length Hollywood film can be considered a copyright infringement. In this case, it cannot.”

Factor 4: Effect of the Use Upon the Potential Market for or Value of the Copyrighted Work. “[The court] interpreted the inclusion of the paraphrased quote in Midnight as actually helping Faulkner and ‘the market value of Requiem if it had any effect at all.’ The court also stated ‘how Hollywood’s flattering and artful use of literary allusion is a point of litigation, not celebration, is beyond this court’s comprehension.'”

The lawyer for the Faulkner literary estate, Lee Caplin, had also argued something called The Lanham Act, suggesting that the dialogue could confuse viewers “as to a perceived affiliation, connection or association” between Faulkner and Sony; the judge rejected this as well.

Caplin groused that the ruling “‘is problematic for authors throughout the United States” and “it’s going to be damaging to creative people everywhere.” If anything, had the ruling gone the other way, THAT would have created a chilling effect on everyone who might use a soupçon of copyrighted material.

Tales from the attic

There are at least a half dozen boxes of file folders filled with something called “letters.” These are pieces of correspondence that people used to write with something called a “pen.”

This is possibly not true of some people, but I like being able to actually be able to FIND specific things in the attic. I don’t have patience rummaging through a dozen and half boxes.

So the area has been a source of frustration for the last three years. First, everything got put into one half of the attic, while the other part was being insulated by spray foam insulation contractors in Houston – First Defense Insulation. Then my wife wanted to paint the insulated half; while I still find that step unnecessary, it does look better. Six weeks of being able to at least get to stuff.

Then the other half had to be insulated, so all the stuff was jammed into the painted half. This process was interrupted by the need to get the roof replaced, a legit issue. But then the room remained undone, month after month, while the contractor dealt with a series of other people’s needs, some of their emergencies. But once it hit a year, I got irritated and asked him if he wanted us to find someone else. (I hardly dealt with him; he was my wife’s contractor for a number of years, and I was loath to interfere.) Once he did return to the room, we discovered the floor needed to be reinforced, and that’s actually a nice addition.

Finally, a full attic, accessible! Well, if you call the narrowest steps around a bend I’ve ever experienced “accessible.” A project for the future.

I care to get to things upstairs because I have two bookcases up there with books. Couldn’t reach them for too long a time; now I can! And now I must put more books in the attic since the shelving in the office is jam-packed.

There are at least a half dozen boxes of file folders filled with something called “letters.” These are pieces of correspondence that people used to write with something called a “pen”, or occasionally written using a device known as a “typewriter.” Based on something I read a long time ago, there are even copies of a few letters I wrote back; I used “carbon paper” when I typed or, usually, hand-printed, because my cursive tended to smear the copy.

I did discover some things I knew were up there but couldn’t get my hands on, such as a bunch of Beatles mono box CDs that got put in a box while painting; a bunch of FantaCo publications, helpful because I’m one of two guys indexing them; my stash of TV Guide season previews; the one box of comic magazines I inadvertently failed to sell when I dumped my collection in 1994, with Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Rampaging Hulk, and Savage Sword of Conan; plus the comics I was buying but had all but stopped reading in 1992 and 1993.

While I got rid of some old bank statements. I kept wedding and funeral programs and the like because it’s the only way I can remember whether a particular event took place in 2005 or 2007.

Oh, and I’d give these away to people, even shipping them within the US (because that international postage has gotten outrageous): I have a cache of green and white buttons that have “Choose Peace” imprinted, vintage the period just before the Iraq war. I also have about five dozen copies of “And don’t call me a racist!” A treasury of quotes on the past, present, and future of the color line in America / Selected and arranged by Ella Mazel.

The process of sorting involved schlepping boxes downstairs because the attic is too hot after about 10 a.m. One Sunday, I was carrying a particularly large box from the second to the first floor when I dropped it. It broke open, sending a cascade of paper products down the stairs like a waterfall; it was, at the moment, actually quite impressive.

What’s the “lesson” of 9/11?

The feds tell web firms to turn over the encrypted user account passwords, just in case they need them, but they’re not going to use them without cause, and a (rubber stamp) court order. Of course.

Photo credit: PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

Every year, I hear, especially since the 10th anniversary, “Remember 9/11! Never forget!” If we somehow forgot, we’d cease to be ‘vigilant’. I remember September 11, 2001, amazingly well, thank you. Just this summer, I was at a highway rest stop on I-87, the Northway, not far from Albany, when I saw a memorial for three people who worked for the Department of Transportation, one of whom I knew not very well, who died on that day.

Even my daughter, who wasn’t even born then, knows about 9/11. Her third-grade teacher made a point of making sure those eight-year-olds knew about it. It even got covered on the local cable channel, YNN.

But what is it that we should not forget? Since then, the United States has had two of its longest wars, including with a country that had nothing to do with the tragedy.

We have had a series of laws – such as the so-called USA PATRIOT Act, which was passed less than six weeks after the tragedy, suggesting it was already in the hopper – that has directly led to the surveillance of Americans. OK, not on Americans, just our “metadata” involving our snail mail, and phones, and e-mail. The feds tell web firms to turn over the encrypted user account passwords, just in case they need them, but they’re not going to use them without cause, and a (rubber stamp) court order. Of course.

Whether or not soldiers have been fighting for our freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s abundantly clear that freedom is being stolen at home by secret courts and executive overreach, against the wishes of most Americans. If the lesson of 9/11 is that we’ll do anything to be safe, that would be yet another tragedy.

Ramblin' with Roger
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