Category Archives: Pop Culture

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and the bah humbugs

December 18, 2015 8:14 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been on a theater kick for the past couple of years and we are right now at the tail end of the 2015 Fall theater season in Houston.  I just have to say that the theater scene in Houston keeps getting better and better all the time.  Houston has gained a national reputation for its fine dining choices and I can see a time when it gains a name as a live theater mecca as well.

But anyways, some of the local troupes that I follow put on Christmas and holiday related plays to cap the year.  Stark Naked Theater put on “Ho Ho Humbug 2.0“, Bayou City Theatrics put on “The 12 dates of Christmas“, and the Classical Theater Company put on “A Christmas Carol“.

The last is of course the classic Charles Dickens story and I wanted to see it as I’ve never seen it performed live but the other two were contemporary stories set in or near present day America and dealt mainly with how we perceive and deal with this time of year.

For better or for worse, people in this country have come to associate this holiday season with certain things.

  • Religion of course.  This is a christian holiday and at one time this was a predominantly christian nation.  Whether you agree with it or not you can’t deny that there is an influence there.
  • Traditions that bind us to certain European countries where Americans originated from
  • Commercialism which is more of an american tradition.

From the late 19th century till about the Mid 20th century this was the Christmas season (the term “holiday season” wasn’t in widespread use).  Government, Church, and commercial interests helped spread and foster the season and developed it into what we came to know as Christmas time.

But then in the mid 20th century we began to see this change over time.  People started to notice that this time of year didn’t resonate with everyone.

One of the earliest examples was the Peanuts Christmas TV special where one of the characters proclaimed that Christmas was a racket and controlled by some company “back East”.  This illustrated the disconnect that some people had always felt around this time of year.

Mass media began to notice that besides the Christian majority that there were people from other faiths in this country and that more and more new Americans were arriving from non western European lands.

At the same time, commercial interests were moving to leverage the holiday for all it was worth.  Store displays are now put up as much as two months in advance and even though there has been some consumer backlash over this, they don’t seem to care that much.

I thought about all these points as I attended the plays I mentioned up above.

Christmas Carol is of course the original story about someone who has disconnected from the holiday.  Scrooge had consciously made a decision to set himself apart from humanity.  The spirits show him that this was not always the case and that he still had time to fix this condition.

12 dates of Christmas was a story about a woman who loses her fiance at Thanksgiving time and for the next 12 months has disastrous dates with various men.  She reflects on how “family centered” that the holidays can be and how single people can feel ostracized around the holiday season.

Ho ho Humbug 2.0 was the most poignant of the three.  A writer, that hates the holidays, needs a temporary job to make his rent and by accident winds up playing a store Santa Claus.  Through some soliloquies the writer explains that even as a child he had never connected to Christmas and that he felt that this job was a farce.

As the play progresses and he interacts with his co-workers and with the customers, he comes to see that Christmas means so much more than the commercialism, the decorations and customs, and even the religious aspect.  Christmas had a distinct meaning to everyone he met.  In the end he doesn’t embrace all the aspects of the holiday but he comes to find a way that he can celebrate the season and make it his own.

I think that last point is the most important.  I see some people decrying the holidays as being too commercial, too religious, too superficial.  But then I look around at people from other parts of the world cheerfully celebrating the holiday and pretty much just ignoring the bits that they don’t like or understand.

For example, Christmas is huge in Japan for the gifting aspect.  Not many Christians there.  I know some Jewish families that put up Christmas trees and focus in on the gift giving and celebration aspects.  Last year I was on vacation in the tropics at this time of year and I saw some of the locals decorating their hut with a Christmas tree.

I guess what I am trying to say is that you need to make the holiday your own in order to enjoy it.  Most people enjoy the season out of habit.  But for those that find the season to be a chore or a bother, I think that if you look more closely that there is something there for you to enjoy as well.

 

Merry Christmas

Posted in: Christmas, consumerism, culture, current events, holidays, Houston, life in general, pop culture, theater, thought , Tagged: ,

Mad Max: Fury Road – Movie review

June 3, 2015 6:57 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Standard Spoiler – This discusses details of the movie Mad Max: Fury Road.  If you don’t want to know what happens then stop here.

 

This review if fairly late.  I actually watched this movie on opening weekend and never really meant to review it but since then there has been some controversy stirred up around the movie and I felt compelled to address it as well.

Fury Road is the fourth in the Mad Max franchise and follows the adventures of former police officer, Max Rockatansky or “Mad Max”, as he struggles to survive in post-apocalyptic Australia.

It’s unclear where in the franchise continuity this film falls in but from what I can piece together this comes in somewhere between films 1 and 2 though that’s not definite and some have suggested that this doesn’t fit in at all in the original trilogy continuity.

Max has run afoul of a group of desert scavengers led by Immortan Joe, a cult like leader living in the only town for hundreds of miles.  Immortan Joe captures Max and plans to use him as an involuntary blood donor for his army, the War boys.  However just as Max’s fate seems sealed one of Joe’s Generals, Imperator Furiosa (played by Charlize Theron), stages a rebellion and runs off with Joe’s wives.  Max suddenly has a chance to escape by joining forces with Furiosa.

Although people know the franchise due to Max, Furiosa is actually the protagonist of this story.  Furiosa’s life has been patterned and altered by Joe since she was kidnapped as a child and forced to do his bidding.  Now she has the perfect opportunity to gain revenge on Joe by helping his unwilling captive wives to escape with her.

This is where the alleged controversy comes into play.  A blogger writing for a “Men’s rights” movement called for a boycott on the film claiming that the film was “feminizing America” by portraying strong female characters and that the film makers had ruined a good film property by “forcing an agenda” on the storyline.

My response to this is that it’s a patently ridiculous argument.  It’s such a ridiculous argument that at first I thought this was an Onion article or from another spoof website but as it turned out it was real.

If you think that this is true then go see the movie for yourself and see if this storyline is in any way forced.  As to strong female characters in a post apocalyptic setting?  What other sorts of characters are supposed inhabit a post apocalyptic setting if not strong?

Like I said ridiculous arguments.

The movie itself is a lot of great eye candy.  The car designers went above and beyond to create a lot of weird and working car contraptions that got used and wrecked in the movies.  The only real and pleasant surprise is that director George Miller opted to use mainly live stunts and pyrotechnics in the film’s most exciting scenes instead of CGI effects.  Moviegoers have become somewhat jaded by the constant stream of CGI special effects in modern blockbuster movies and it was refreshing to see the live stunt work done by professional stuntmen and Cirque du Soleil performers.

So is it worth seeing?  For the eye candy?  Yes, very impressive.  For the storyline?  It’s a good strong storyline.  A few holes here and there but solid.  For the controversy?  What controversy?

Posted in: movies, pop culture, review , Tagged: , ,

Catalysis

May 22, 2015 7:10 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Catalysis, the process of accelerating a reaction, mostly associated with chemical reactions, this process can also take place in other situations.  Mainly I’m thinking about human interactions here.

When you get together with other people whether at work or play or in study, something happens just by interacting.  It’s an inevitable result of humans being social animals.  Exchanges are made no matter how careful one or both parties are.  Exchanges of not just physical goods but ideas, notions, and attitudes.

Just the slightest contact is enough to set the human imagination going and from there who knows what can happen.  The best example of this would be the great Columbian exchange where not just plants, animals, technologies, and diseases flowed freely back and forth between the Old and New world.  Ideas and concepts made the journeys as well.  Unforeseen consequences followed but nevertheless the exchange would form and fashion the world for the next 500 years to come.

But even at human scale levels these exchanges can yield extraordinary results.  So many new ideas and concepts have come about from people getting together in coffee houses or in libraries or other public gathering spaces.  Free and unfettered exchanges of ideas are always generating new concepts and pushing the bounds of our civilization.

But beyond this I think these exchanges not only serve to disseminate information but to stir up humanity’s competitive spirit.  I think that when people get together and see what other people in other fields are doing that they themselves feel compelled to make an even greater effort in their own fields.  The Catalysis I mention is not just exposure to new concepts but the exposure to the passion and drive that other people have for their particular field.

It’s one of the reasons I love going to large conventions and to art showings and to book readings.  I find that I leave more energized and determined to do better and to try different things after attending these gatherings.  The energy is infectious and the result is that I want to do more in my own life than I previously did.

Posted in: culture, ideas, pop culture, relationships, social networks, speculation, thought

fans

April 22, 2015 6:05 AM , 2 Comments ,

The Star Wars trailer came out the other day. Don’t know if it will be a good movie or not but the initial signs are positive.  Movie trailers are not a huge event to most people but to devotees of the series, it was highly anticipated.

Nowadays trailers usually come out on YouTube and people on YouTube will film what’s called reaction videos.  Basically videos of their initial and genuine reaction to the trailer.  I could waste hours watching these. I find it somewhat fascinating to watch these. I was also shocked that so many people made these videos already.

I like watching not only the reactions but in particular I also like to note the diversity of the fan base.  Not all Star Wars fans are pasty skinned, fat, glass wearing nerds.  The phenomena that is the Star Wars series runs the gamut through all races, genders, and economic backgrounds and is worldwide.

It’s somewhat difficult to explain the appeal of this series.  I mean it’s one thing to say that it all has to do with cool special effects and space movies and fighting but I feel that there must be more here.  These are a series of movies that people have memorized all the lines and regularly quote these lines to one another during conversations.  I don’t mean that they quote just memorable lines but they will quite literally quote each and every line to one another no matter how innocuous  the line.

I don’t think that happens with any other series, even with venerated series like Star Trek.  Something about the themes, the ideas behind the story reaches out and touches individuals no matter what their background or situation.  They can relate to a character in the story, they can relate to the feeling of struggling against a system that feels oppressive, they can relate something of their own particular situation to what they see up on the screen.

Something else I noted watching all these reaction videos was the number of female fans that posted reaction videos.  Nerd and science fiction culture has had to take a long and hard look at itself with regards to the ingrained discrimination towards female fans this last year.  It has been a painful but most necessary process.  We who have proclaimed ourselves to be the oppressed underdogs fighting against a system that discriminates against us.  We have been guilty of the same sort of oppression against female fans.  A lot of the old guard nerds have asserted that female fans are not as passionate about science fiction or that they just “don’t get it”.  I think this puts that argument to rest.

Just one more to make the point.

 

 

Posted in: culture, entertainment, fans, life in general, movies, pop culture, thought

Why I don’t support pressuring the Redskins to change their name and why they should do it

June 26, 2014 6:40 AM , Leave a Comment ,

It’s no secret that I am no fan of censorship in any form.  I do not agree with any forms of restriction on speech in any format.  Whether it’s censorship in some sort of art form or in actual words.  Using the threat of force or law to alter or diminish speech is wrong no matter what the intention.

Many people will say that when the subject becomes objectionable that it becomes difficult to justify my stance on free speech.  People will say that some things need to be curtailed or dissuaded for the greater good of society as a whole.  Another argument is that pragmatism demands that although ideally we should be allowed to say what we want that reality demands that some sacrifices be made for the greater good.

These are the arguments of those that already have made up their minds and are just casting about for an excuse to justify censorship.

Nowhere is there a greater need to allow free expression than in those things that we deem objectionable.  The unpopular opinion, mindset, or idea needs to be present and readily accessible in the public discussion.  It may seem a small, insignificant point to exclude those ideas that we don’t like but any disruption to the stream of ideas that are available to the public creates a rift, a chasm that will ripple outwards towards other ideas that you may agree with.  Maybe not today or tomorrow but eventually.

If for no other reason these ideas have to be expressible and accessible to future generations at the very least as educational examples of the way that humans can be cruel to each other and may be cruel again in the future.  The key to not committing the errors of the past is to study them in the future.

Now as to the Redskins football team in particular, why should they voluntarily change their names?  Well, the very property that they seek to protect (the name, the logo, etc) is now damaged beyond repair.  It’s now well established that a large number of people find the name objectionable and that they consider it to be something hurtful and downright insulting.

The fan base that treasures the brand is going to age and slowly disappear over time.  The younger fan base will not support the brand and as a result they will lose fan support.

The pragmatic argument to change the brand is that it is no longer tenable or desirable to keep.  Changing the brand to something else is the smart course of action to maintain the fan base of support and keep the franchise going for the long-term.  But whatever they do, they should do it on their own.

 

 

 

 

Posted in: culture, football, language, pop culture, prejudice, racism, sports

generation which?

February 2, 2014 6:41 AM , 2 Comments ,

I was reading an article in Wired magazine the other day about Generation X and how we’ve matured and changed in the last quarter century to become more responsible and settled.

While I don’t necessarily disagree with this assessment, what really caught my eye was a list of famous generation Xer’s, particularly President Obama.

While technically it is true (he was born in 1961 and by the definition of the generation X time frame of 1961 to 1981 he fits), I find it hard to accept that he is part of my generation.  He seems to be more in tune with an older, more analog generation.

Being born in 1970 I am smack dab in the middle of Generation X and I suppose I do carry some of the ideas, faults, and peccadilloes of my generation.  I am more in tune with my fellow X’ers than with my parents and with those born to the later generations. I don’t necessarily agree with all the ideas of this generation but I am aware of them.

But what is it like for those born right at the edge of one generation and another?  How do they identify?  Ideas, concepts, and movements from both generations tug at them constantly.  I always think that it must be something akin to ‘middle child syndrome”, where you don’t really know what role you play in the family.

Sometimes the generational gap isn’t too broad a leap.  The Millennial generation seems to me to be quite similar to the Xer’s in ideas and problems and I don’t imagine that those born between these two generations are too confused.

I don’t think that the same can be said for those born between the baby boomers and generation X.  I imagine that the early sixties was a somewhat confusing time to be born and to start out in life.  Many of the old cultural identities didn’t apply anymore and the new ones had not yet been drafted.  One generation is more idealistic and the other one more self-centered.  What does this make these in betweeners?  Do they rebel against both generations and set their own course?  Are they somehow handicapped in life by not having a firm set of ideas?

Posted in: aging, culture, life in general, pop culture, thought

finding the good

December 30, 2013 8:13 AM , 1 Comment ,

Is trying to find the good in anything just some lame justification for bad movies, books, and pop culture or is there something to this?

I hate the “Harry Potter” series of books.  I’ve made no secret about it as I find them poorly executed and extremely warmed over fiction that I’ve previously read.  All that being said, most people would agree that as far as encouraging young people to read or to expand their minds to greater concepts that they serve a useful purpose.

Similarly on television we have the “edutainment” phenomena.  Basically trying to mix the qualities of education and learning with the appeal of entertainment to try to engage a wider audience, spread knowledge, and hopefully spark some curiosity about the wider world.

The problem with these efforts is that they have largely become focused on providing the lowest common denominator of entertainment and really have little to nothing to do with engaging curiosity of the public or the more analytical part of the mind.  They are really nothing more than distractions for the population as a whole than anything worthwhile.

Now, I have faced similar arguments in my life with regards to some things that I like such as “Star wars”, “Star trek”, all the writings of Tolkien and Heinlein.  I’ve heard all these same arguments applied to these.  But the thing is that these people may have been derivative in some of their work but they derived straight from the source material.

Tolkien and Lucas drew from most of the world;s mythologies to create their works.  They retell old stories in new ways and spread the original messages told in those stories in ways that the modern mind can comprehend.

Heinlein and Roddenberry’s works are more modern social commentaries disguised as science fiction stories than they are works of entertainment.  They draw heavily from the progressive and modernism movements of the early to mid 20th century.

These works are much closer to the idea of edutainment than anything we have that’s being produced today.  They provide something for the mind to chew over and don’t just distract.

So is there something redeeming in these new works?  They can at least be said to be keeping literature and film going for another generation.  Hopefully time enough for the next crop of great writers and directors to come along and create something worthwhile.

Posted in: books, movies, pop culture

Social network pluses and minuses

December 18, 2013 9:26 PM , 1 Comment ,

So there I am sitting in the Commons lobby at Texas A&M in 1989.  My friend Lynn, a computer major, says “come on bill, let’s go check out the new VAX terminals”.  They had just installed a new computing center in the commons lobby for students to use the shared VAX terminals on campus.

Being a freshman I had no clue what to do but Lynn set up my account and pointed me to the talk function.  Soon I was chatting away with strangers from other universities around the country and around the world.  This was my first exposure to the social side of the internet.

This was quickly followed up by the USENET newsgroups.  Basically forums on the early internet where people talked about particular subjects.  Over time I developed friends and enemies on these groups.  Discussions became quite heated and on more than one occasion I would get carried away.  These were the legendary flame wars of the 1990s.  The passion of youth I suppose.

Years passed and the World Wide Web arose.  Social media got more sophisticated with the advent of the chat room.  Dozens and sometimes hundreds of people chatting at once, making little cliques, building friendships, just hanging out together.  In time advertisers learned about these and over time began to infiltrate bots into the rooms.  These were automated programs posing as real humans meant to advertise and sell things.  These along with the ever-present cyber bullies spelled the end of the chat rooms.

Along came the MMO.  the Massively Multiplayer Online game.  Now you not only had a name tag you had a body as well and a shared activity.  We lived lifetimes online.  We also died together and we built up close bonds.  But over time people drifted off and my time on those came to an end.

And now comes social media fully matured and developed in the form of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

A few things I’ve noticed during all my travels online:

  • All of these communities have a beginning, middle, and end.
  • While we are in those communities we can’t fathom ever leaving
  • The end comes abruptly and almost unexpectedly
  • When it’s time to go, it’s time to go.

I don’t know if it’s time to leave these current communities.  I will be totally honest.  I don’t get Twitter.  I’ve tried for a year and it just doesn’t click with me.  To me it’s a technology that’s at least 5 years old and very limiting.  Facebook I understand and enjoy more.  It’s pretty well-developed and has many features.  Google+…..  I looked at once and left.  I don’t doubt it’s well done but it came too late to the party.  The others rule the social media roost.

Yet, more and more often I am coming down with social media fatigue and a feeling of deja vu as if I’m just repeating the same things over and over again.  I’ve explored all aspects of these sites and I don’t see anything new to capture my attention.

It’s gotten to the point that on a whim I looked up the steps for erasing my profiles on these social media sites.  So far I don’t have any plans to carry this out but I do think that it’s telling that I looked into this.

I don’t yet see the next big thing on the net, though I don’t doubt that it’s coming.  I will probably hop on when it does arrive.  Or maybe I will go totally offline and go back to living a life without the net.

I am part of the last generation that started life in the analog world and had to adapt to life in the digital age.  The Millennials that came after me have no clue about life without the video monitor or the computer.  This is their world and it’s the world of the generations to come.

Maybe it’s time to go back to the old analog world.  After all, I lived there once before and I can do it again.

Posted in: internet, pop culture, relationships, social networks

Days of futures lost

August 18, 2013 8:56 PM , Leave a Comment ,

Whatever happened to that George Jetson future we were all promised?

Where’s our jet car, pill food, 4 hour workday, and robot maid?

But it goes beyond that.  Nuclear war, remember back in the 80s we were promised the big final knock down drag out final conflict between east and west and that the few of us left would most probably end up in a desert like nuclear wasteland with giant ants chasing us and wearing all black leather clothes and fighting over the last can of Hormel beans?

The trouble with imagining the future is that you can get so easily lost on one measly detail that you really miss the big picture.  Verne and Wells understood this back at the beginning of the last century and took short hops into the future rather than huge leaps.  They prognosticated using the technology of the day and teased that out slightly into the future to see what they could develop and for the most part they did rather well.

The tank, the submarine, the moon shot; pretty spot on.  But when they tried to delve into the social sciences they kind of fell flat.  If you go to any book store and look up these authors you will find all the familiar titles (20000 leagues under the sea, war of the worlds, from the earth to the moon, etc) but some of their more controversial works are pretty much unavailable.

Verne wrote “Paris in the 20th century” in 1863 but never published it as he found it too ridiculous.  It basically is a dystopian view of modern society and may have been a precursor to 1984 if Orwell would have seen it.

Wells delved even deeper into this type of futuristic prognostication.  He wrote “the world set free”, “the sleeper awakens” and of course “the time machine”.  All commentaries on contemporary society and what he foresaw might happen if we continued on the current course and what he thought the correct course would be.

By themselves these are flops.  But if we step back and look at the trends that they anticipate then maybe there is value in them.  Trends such as a move to transnational government entities, increased regulation of the individual, and globalization.  These are things that are actually happening.  Maybe not as they foresaw and definitely not the ends that they hoped or feared would occur.

We have to be careful when we write the future that we are not allowing our inner fears and hopes to taint the work.  Of course express your views in your work but always step back and look at critically and say is this what the future will really look like?

Posted in: pop culture, writing

Spacecitycon 2013

August 3, 2013 10:18 PM , Leave a Comment ,

I have looked forward to this for the last couple of months.  I had four major events this planned for this Summer.  Since the trip to the San Diego Comicon fell through this became the highlight of the season.

By far not the biggest convention out there.  Even our own local Comicpalooza convention in March is bigger but I was shocked by the growth this year.  They hired out the Westchade Marriott hotel in west Houston as the venue and already it is overflowing.

I arrived at 2 P.M. just after work and thought parking would be a breeze since most folk would be at work.  Ha!  I spent forty minutes driving round and round looking for parking till I finally had to park far out in the street.  Inside it was worse.  A long circuitous line wrapped round the lobby to get tickets.  Took me another forty-five minutes for a simple 3 day pass.  Walking was almost impossible and this was only day one.  Who knows how it will be during the main day!

Once past these onerous tasks I settled into my convention tasks.  I took a couple of loops round the artist alley and the dealer’s room.  Saw some old friends and acquaintances that I see all the time at these events.  They mostly travel the local convention circuit but some go around the nation doing these things.

I skimmed all the dealer booths to see what would be worth a return visit or three.  I never buy the first day of the convention.  Hate carrying stuff around and you never know what you might see that you like later.

I had some time to kill and took in the autograph booths.  Mostly minor celebrities.  Some recent and some from my childhood.  They had varying expressions on their faces ranging from being bored at sitting around for the locals to gawk at, to nervous excitement at meeting people.  Some chatted amicably with their fans for a good long time, others just scrawled a name on a picture or memento and sent the fan on after receiving the money.

I took in a sing along performance at the end of the first day.  You truly get a sense of camaraderie when you sit in a room packed with strangers and do silly things and sing silly songs.

I spent most of the second day at the convention.  Began with Tracy and Laura Hickman’s killer breakfast.  Essentially an en masse Dungeons and dragons game where the Hickmans invent the most amusing way to kill you and humiliate you in front of everyone assembled.

After that something a bit more serious.  Some writer’s workshops reflecting on building the backdrop to stories and how to edit and proofread your works.  Some really good ideas there.  More importantly for me some things to reflect on as I go through my pieces.

A book reading by a few authors there.  Very compelling writing,

The final event was a fan made star wars movie.  Stood in line for 45 minutes but it was so worth it.

Took my final turn round the dealer’s room and bought a couple minor items and took a last look round.  All the people in costumes, the kids running round, the adults acting like kids, people really get into these things.  And then there’s me.  As always I feel slightly apart from it all.  I still do yet here I feel more comfortable, I enjoy all the silly events, the costumes, the throngs of people, all the confusion.

I know that it’s all just pop culture nonsense and it’s not educational or improving me in any way but there’s more to life than those things.  Stop some time, look around and you may notice that life is happening and passing you by.

 

 

 

Posted in: conventions, Houston, life in general, pop culture