Hanging Fire

This is one of the panels for San Diego Comic-Con this year:

10:00-11:00 TwiFic FanGroup— AngstGoddess003 (Wide Awake), EZRocksAngel (Creature of Habit), tby789 (The Office), manyafandom (The Arrangement) and more of the most popular writers in Fan Fic discuss their stories, writing, and thoughts on canon. Join us for Q&A time with some of the best fan fiction writers out there! Room 24A

The summary makes it sound like it's a multifandom thing, but it's clearly not; it's a fucking Twilight fanfic panel.

Now I have no objection to the notion of fandom and fanfic panels at San Diego, but something about this really bloody rubs me the wrong way.

St Vincent. Absurdly talented, a terrific musician and songwriter, who can go from a quirky and deceptively sweet-sounding ballad like "Marry Me" to rocking out on "Actor Out of Work". Also, she confuses the male critics at Pitchfork. She has some of the strangest-sounding pop arrangements I've ever heard, and she sold out Mohawk last week.

David Byrne. Twenty-first century Renaissance man who, with his band, will rock "Burning Down the House" while wearing fluffy white tutus. You definitely want to read his commentary on the city of Houston, in all its humid glory.

Patrick Wolf: Because almost no one else in his generation is opening a concert by walking out on stage wearing a fantastically designed leather cape, which is then removed to reveal a jumpsuit with a kind of black-white-grey Union Jack design, which slowly gets unzipped further and further as the concert progresses. He was also covered in so much glitter that you could see it spray in the light when he shook his head. I'm too young to have seen Bowie live as Ziggy Stardust, but Wolf gives you an idea of what it must have been like. boy was amazing. And he was also having a lot of fun.

While TMZ was breaking the biggest pop culture story of the year last week, phylomath and I were having a conversation over AIM.

As far as Michael Jackson himself goes, there is very little I can add to that. The boy my friends and I crushed on in third and fourth grade has been gone for a very long time, and the freakish ghost he's been for the last decade and change was, for me, some other creature altogether.

There's no doubt the news coverage has been excessive and that there are plenty of other things going on in the world that could use the column inches, but to say that this death is entirely unimportant is, I think, to dismiss pop culture and its effects on people's lives. And of course it doesn't matter to everyone—there are plenty of people for whom Jackson's music was simply never their cup of tea, and many many more who never saw or experienced him as anything other than the freakshow he was for the last fifteen years, and many more who never experienced him or his music at all.

Americans in my demographic, who are old enough to have remembered when everyone and their dog owned a copy of Thriller—we're perhaps one of the last generations shaped by a pop monoculture. And probably that's a good thing; pop monocultures have a tendency to marginalize people, and I quite enjoy the pop multiculture we have now, where everyone can find their niche that suits their tastes. But whether we partook of that pop monoculture of the 1980s or were alienated by it, it was, one way or another, a formative experience simply by virtue of having been lived through. And Michael Jackson, in all his nutty, creepy glory, was an enormous part of it. And for better or for worse, I think that Americans in my demographic, give or take a few years on either side, are the ones who've got hold of the stage in the great global open mic night of history. This is not necessarily a good thing, admittedly.

Is it as "important" as Glasnost, the Green Revolution, 9/11, or any other "real world" newsmaker event you can name? That, I suppose, depends entirely on what you mean by "important". Are lives and deaths made or broken by it? Not at all, except for those of Jackson's own family and intimates. Do major political movements live or breathe by it? Of course not. Is it linked, somehow, to millions upon millions of memories, emotions—dancing your heart out in your parents' basement with your best friend, your first kiss, your first heartbreak, one night of karaoke triumph, you name it? Yes. Is that important?

I suppose that depends on what you mean by "important", and that I leave as an exercise to the reader.

I've been using Tumblr a lot lately to post the random bits of cultural flotsam that have been coming my way -- photos, videos, etc. I didn't see the point of it at first, but I've found that it's actually rather addictive in some strange way.

Anyway, that's why I haven't been posting much here.

Plus I'm sure everyone is tired of me whinging about ... well, everything. Maybe it's the fucked-up weather, or something, but June has been a record month for me coming across things that make my blood pressure rise, particularly things that hit me square in the identity politics.

Good stuff, too. We saw David Byrne in Houston, and had dinner at Feast (which is terrific, and which serves the very best strawberry tart I've ever tasted in my life); and we also saw St Vincent here in Austin. I've started getting into disco, of all things -- Manu Dibango's Soul Makossa, Donna Summer, Boney M (for which thanks to karaoke league), and more.

Meanwhile, I leave you with this posting from Videogum, which sums up a lot about how I've been feeling about the internets lately. "Go To Bed, Twitter, It Is Your Bedtime". Hat tip to lizlet, who posted it on Tumblr. Go read it.

Definitely getting back into the knitting thing, I suppose. I've just ordered the yarn and beads to make the Rani beaded wristcuffs mentioned a few days ago (using the Mulberry color), and I also ordered some Malabrigo laceweight to tackle Elizabeth Zimmerman's Pi shawl. I need to look through my stitch pattern books for a lace pattern that will work for that shawl; I really like lace knitting, and this seems like a good project. Mostly, I think I just need a diversion from the Fourth Doctor scarf I've been chugging away on. It's easy, but it's just row after row after row after ROW of garter stitch, and it would be nice to have something else to switch off to.

I also want to make a Clanger. I have the yarn and even the felt and eyes; it's been a long time since I made a soft toy, and this seems like fun.

Although this time it's not so much bad as Very Unhappy.

( In which Muji has a sort of litterbox incident. )

Related: NY Times readers tackle the question of whether cats experience shame or regret.

Technically, this beaded wrist cuff pattern from the latest Knitty has nothing at all to do with Doctor Who:



but the fact that it shares the name of my favorite Who villainness is enough to make me want to line these up as my next knitting project. (Though I'd probably want to end up making them longer, for all that doing so would probably mean a hell of a lot of back-and-forth knitting).

Holy cats, Gordon Brown looks awful:



Picture from this article in the Guardian, which has the magnificently painful title, "Labour suffers long, dark night of humiliation".

The Scissor Sisters have turned Roxy Music's "Do the Strand" into a disco song.

I realise on some level this is probably wrong, but I don't care. I approve.

ETA: Here's where you can find it. Issa good cause and all that.

The National Review is the big-time loser of the Cultural Sensitivity Award for this week.

( Clicky for the cover of the June 22 issue, in all its wrongness. And not the fun kind of wrongness. )

I'm going to try and puzzle this one out later, because right now the only words that are really forming themselves are basically "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?"

Today's dose of bile comes courtesy of the NY Times Food Section. I think I mostly just needed to rant about something, and the Times gave me excuses. I suggest you keep moving.

Still there? Well, all right...

First up, William Grimes tackles "nouvelle speakeasies" in "Bar? What Bar?" ( Here, I'm merely irritable. )

Which leads us to Flex Mussels, the latest venture to come under Frank Bruni's tender scrutiny in the New York Times. ( And this is where I get really angry. )

My photoshop privileges probably need to be revoked.

Like many things of this sort, this started in an IM conversation.

youngcurmudgeon: (comparison of the day: Ana-Marie Cox is the Gabrielle to Rachel Maddow's Xena)

hangingfire: (ha!)

youngcurmudgeon: mostly I just like Rachel Maddow with a Big Fcking Sword

hangingfire: Someone needs to do a piece of fanart of that.

youngcurmudgeon: agreed

hangingfire: ...where's my photoshop.

( And so... )

For anyone who cares, ( answers to the quiz )

Simon Pegg in a kilt, at the premiere of the Star Trek film.

( Clicky for the picture )

This one comes from narniadear, and I think it's pretty cool.

List three characters from ten of your favourite books. The challenge is to guess what the books are! For the sake of consistency, use all first names.

1. Catherine, Mitzi, Honoria
2. Letitia, Gerald, Harriet: Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (almost innocentsmith, knockabout)
3. Jessica, Wellington, Vladimir: Frank Herbert, Dune (knockabout)
4. Fred, William, Annie
   
5. Harry, Richard, Amelia: Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword (innocentsmith)
6. Anne, Walter, Henrietta: Jane Austen, Persuasion (narniadear)
7. Lorenza, Jacopo, Lia: Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum (chrmanma0)
8. Susan, Albert, Jonathan: Terry Pratchett, Hogfather (innocentsmith)
9. Rose, Anne, Harry
10. Gertrude, Cora, Irma: Mervyn Peake, The Gormenghast Trilogy (cavlec)

No, I don't know why Anne (and variations on it) keeps popping up. And yes, I am aware that sort of thing makes it that much harder. Some of these, though, will be dead obvious if you've read the book(s) in question.

Books I did not select from on the grounds that the obviousness caused pain: Use of Weapons, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Lord of the Rings, The Hero and the Crown, The Phantom Tollbooth.

ETA: Complete answers here.

From Ben Templesmith on Twitter, some freakish bit of music that is basically Doctor Who by way of Serge Gainsbourg.

( Click for the embedded player )

Exterminez-vous!

I'm going to blame my increasing fascination (not quite an obsession yet) with British library music and soundtracks from the 1960s and 1970s on two things:

1. Doctor Who
   
2. Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius books

The first is obvious; it's the means by which most Americans will have heard of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Delia Derbyshire, and Brian Hodgson. The second is less obvious, but I think it has to do with the sense of time and place of the original tetralogy, and the fact that the feel of the music fits seamlessly (at least in my head) with the subject matter that Moorcock tackles there.

As a result, Movie Grooves and Trunk Records are going to be very dangerous to my pocketbook.

To date, I've acquired:

• Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop: vol 1, vol 2.
  
• Delia Derbyshire: Electrosonic
• Delia Derbyshire: White Noise
• The BBC Radiophonic Workshop: A Retrospective
  
• The Tomorrow People
  
• John Baker: The John Baker Tapes
• Daphne Oram: Oramics
• Teresa Rampazzi: Musica Endoscopica (Italian, but very much of a piece with all the rest of this)
  
• Doctor Who: Music from The Tenth Planet
• G Spots (library music from a studio called Studio G; this is AWESOME)
  
• Gypsy Creams and Ginger Nuts
  

I think I'm going to get the MP3s of music from "The Clangers" from Trunk next. Also? I am not sure what the hell this is, but what I am certain of is that I WANT IT.

...to add anything coherent to the mass of commentary on the new Star Trek film.

I laughed, I cried, I cheered, I enjoyed the hell out of it. There were a couple of headscratchers, and one of the key bits of explain-o-logue made me giggle, but other than that? Joy was brought to an old fangirl's heart.

Also: if you haven't already, and you've seen the movie or are planning on seeing it, you might really want to check out that Star Trek: Countdown comic, the prequel to this thing. The art is kind of meh, but the writing is pretty good, and it enhances the overall film experience without being absolutely 100% crucial to it. (Next Gen fans should definitely check it out.)

I have a whole essay brewing in my head about my three core SF fandoms: Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who. What they mean to me, how I got to them and at what points in my life, all of that. Star Wars was the first, when I was five. I actually don't remember when I saw it for the first time, and I'm not even 100% sure that I saw it before I got obsessed with the toys. Doctor Who came next, via the Dover, DE PBS station; I'd have been about eleven, perhaps, no older than twelve. Then Star Trek, when I was thirteen; I actually got into Star Trek: The Next Generation first, and concurrently began watching the original series, which happened to be showing on syndication on one of the stations in San Antonio.

Anyway, there are definitely more thoughts on this to come. Just not right now.

This is a sort of ongoing joke/routine with me and phylomath. It started with a mention during Karaoke League of The Power of Freddie.


The Power of Freddie is, in a word, to ROCK.



Later, we came up with The Power of Ferry. This power, of course, is to be suaver than thou.



The Power of Bowie is to be cooler than thou. Effortlessly.



The Power of PJ is to be more commanding than thou. As in, get over a thousand people at Stubb's to STFU and listen.


Suggestions for more rock god and goddess powers?

(Also,I used my Alex Kapranos icon for this post, but it must be said that he has a long way and many years to go before he achieves godhood. Still, Franz Ferdinand appears to be on a good path, anyway.)