…that Daft Punk piece wasn’t a one-off; it’s part a broader strategy the publisher is pursing. It’s shunning the pageview and ad impression arms race that’s gripping the industry in an attempt to build its business the old fashioned way: By attracting an audience that’s loyal and engaged with its brand. Hence, the importance it places on finding new and interesting ways to present its content.
“Our goal is to be the best music magazine in the world, not the biggest,” said Matt Frampton, Pitchfork’s vp of sales. “We want to reach a specific breed of die-hard music fans, and there aren’t 100 million of those in the U.S. We’re not interested in the pageview or SEO games; for us, it’s about reaching and really engaging a relatively small group of passionate people.”
Hopefully, more online publications will begin adopting similarly creative approaches.
]]>Earlier this year, Merlin’s Nose Records — a label specializing in “60’s Psychedelic Rock, weird Acid Folk and shamanistic Pagan Folk” — reissued In Gowan Ring’s psychedelic folk classic The Glinting Spade (which was originally released by Bluesanct in 1999, read my review) on ultra-heavy vinyl. This, following a tour in support of the reissue. Anyways, listen to my favorite track from the album below.
“A Bee At The Dolmen's Dell” is a fine summary of everything that I like about B’eirth’s music: delicate, otherworldly instrumentation, dreamlike vocals, and cryptic lyrics (e.g., “The broken heart laughing, fold into figure, woven on sylvan shells/The saints and the sentries, with tassel and withy, a bee at the dolmen’s dell”). It may be tempting to write this stuff off as Renaissance Faire fodder, but there’s something wierd and wild and wonderful about B’eirth’s music that makes it impossible to dismiss so easily.
]]>Community's fourth season has come and gone, and as much as it pains me to say it, I had hoped it was the end for the show. However, Community has been renewed for a fifth season — bringing it a little closer to the fabled “six seasons and a movie” — which puts me in the frustrating position of saying that, after having slogged through a largely lackluster and uninspired fourth season, I just want the show to be put out of its misery. In fact, if I could pull an Inspector Spacetime, I’d travel back and stop the fourth season before it even began.
When was the last time a show so effectively and thoroughly undermined so much of what made it great? How did it come to this? For its first three seasons, Community was one of the most unique, bizarre, and consistently funny TV shows I’d seen in a long time. It was never a huge ratings success, but it was a critical darling with a devoted cult following. The show took its basic storyline — a group of misfits enroll in a local community college and form a study group — and wove in some of the cleverest and geekiest pop culture references this side of Spaced, some pretty inventive production techniques, and some surprisingly affecting character development.
So, again, how did it come to this? I have several theories…
1) The show had already ended.
Community often seemed in danger of getting cancelled. This, no doubt, explained some of its odder, more daring moments: after all, if your fate is uncertain, why not shoot a spaghetti western-themed episode about a schoolwide paintball fight? But the specter of cancellation must have loomed especially heavy during the third season, as behind-the-scenes troubles (e.g., tensions between show creator Dan Harmon and Chevy Chase) increased. So it’s not too surprising that the third season was given the ending that it had.
Most, if not all, of the character’s arcs were brought to a satisfying conclusion, and we were given a nice summation of both the show’s weirder storylines (e.g., the Dreamatorium), as well as its more human, emotional ones (e.g., Jeff's decision to find his father). It was as perfect and satisfying an ending as one could’ve hoped for, given everything happening to the show at the time.
After that perfect ending, though, where was there left to go? The fourth season might have given it the ol’ (community) college try, but after the third season, I’d argue that Community had effectively said everything it needed to say.
2) The show used pop culture references simply for the sake of including pop culture references.
Community was incredibly smart about its usage of pop culture references. Indeed, that was one of the elements that really drew me to the show. But the show’s use of such references was unique. For one thing, it tended to favor obscure references and would patiently wait several seasons to get a particular reference’s payoff. What’s more, the references were there, not just to be clever, but to actually tell us something about the characters, especially in the case of Abed. (Consider “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas”, “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons”, or “Critical Film Studies”.)
The fourth season had plenty of pop culture references, too. But they felt forced, outdated, or there for their own sake. Or, as Todd VanDerWerff writes in his review of “Advanced Introduction To Finality”:
...the entire central portion of this episode — the bulk of its running time — is taken up with a constant barrage of things that worked once or twice but now feel like the show is just trying too hard. Paintball? A movie reference for the sake of a movie reference? Chang taking over the school? Fake Dean? It’s all way, way too much, and it does nothing to elucidate Jeff’s emotional conflict.
That was the feeling I got the entire season, like the show was being made by people who were using a Community checklist to make sure they got put in everything they were supposed to. At first, I thought the show’s new staff were in the process of doing something truly subversive, what with Abed’s constant “meta” references in the earlier episodes to being on a television show.
Maybe, I thought, the reason these episodes feel like cheap knockoffs of actual Community episodes is that Abed was stuck inside the mini-Dreamatorium that we saw him enter in the third season’s finale. The fourth season was starting off in his head, I theorized, as he tried to come up with an ideal version of Greendale based on his pop culture obsession, and that would lead to some conflict as the others tried to get him to leave the “Dreamatorium reality” and come back to “real reality”. Obviously, I was wrong.
The show just couldn’t recapture whatever it was that it had during the Harmon days. Alan Sepinwall put it this way back in February:
For the most part, the new episodes understand who these characters are and how they relate to each other. They speak in the show’s usual cadences, and they drop the appropriate pop culture references at the right time. (The other episode sent out for review takes place at a fan convention for “Inspector Spacetime,” a “Doctor Who” pastiche that has entranced Troy and Abed.) But something’s off about almost all of it. It feels like Port, Guarascio and the other writers decided to reverse-engineer the Harmon version of “Community,” but couldn’t quite manage without the missing ingredient of Harmon himself.
3) The show never learned from its own lessons.
One of the show’s most consistent running gags was the study group’s constant irritation with Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase). Hawthorne was racist, sexist, manipulative, and all around unpleasant, and the show got plenty of laughs from making him the butt of many jokes. However, he was also given several moments of redemption. By the fourth season, though, the treatment of him began to feel mean-spirited and worse, pointless.
After watching the umpteenth episode in which Jeff and the rest of the study group learned a valuable lesson about not excluding or abandoning Pierce — who, for all of his nastiness, was sad and lonely and just wanted to belong somewhere — I found myself wondering when the show’s writers and producers would learn a similar lesson. They never did.
Chase left the show partway through the fourth season and was largely absent during the season’s second half. But by then, Pierce had become so marginalized that, I must admit, I didn’t even realize he was gone at times. I was so used to him getting short shrift from the show anyway.
4) The show forgot about the rest of Greendale.
You’d be forgiven if, while watching the fourth season, you forgot that other students attended Greendale Community College, and that it wasn’t just Jeff, Abed, and the rest of the study group who walked the campus. Earlier seasons introduced us to a fantastic array of bizarre and memorable characters (e.g., Leonard, Star-Burns, “Fat Neil”, Professor Professorson, Garrett, the Air Conditioning Repair School). These characters grew increasingly diminished during the fourth season, which is a shame because they added some wonderful humor and color to the show. (Consider “Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples”, “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons”, and “Geography of Global Conflict”.)
What’s more, their diminished presence also undercut another one of the show’s running jokes: the tension between the “cool”, Dean Pelton-loved study group and the rest of Greendale’s students. (Though, to be fair, this particularly storyline was given a nice treatment in the season four episode “Intro to Felt Surrogacy”.)
Conclusion
So who's to blame for all of this? Certainly not the actors. None of the cast slacked off, with the notable exception of Chevy Chase. They just weren’t given good material with which to work. I suppose you could blame the writers and showrunners (Moses Port, David Guarascio, et al.) but that doesn’t get to the heart of it. No, I blame whatever executives at NBC deemed it necessary to get rid of Dan Harmon. Time and again, in interviews and other pieces, it was clear that Community was basically being piped in directly from Harmon’s brain. Without Harmon, Community is not Community — and I don’t say that to disparage those currently working on the show.
So, what about the upcoming fifth season? I confess, I’m at an even greater loss as to where the show can go now. Jeff has graduated, bringing to a close the show’s primary plotline, so what reasons will the writers come up with to keep him on campus? I’m sure they’ll be “wacky” and “offbeat” like everything else, but it won’t be the same… and after the fourth season, I’m under no illusions that it’ll be good (remember, if you will, the “Changnesia” debacle).
“Six seasons and a movie” has always been the Community fanbase’s rallying cry. But, after slogging through the fourth season, that feels like three seasons and a movie too long. Part of me hopes I’m proven wrong, and if I am, I’ll gladly eat crow. The rest of me, though, is just fine with living as if Community ended with season three, and everything since then has been some other series that just so happened to be named Community, too.
]]>]]>I’m asking that you let me take you to a dark place in my life, and that you’ll have faith I’m not going to abandon you there. Because my intent is not to hurt you. I want the players that enter my creation to feel loved. I want players to walk with me in the garden of my life, to see the faith and hope; the weakness and doubt; and to love my son, the same way I love my son, even if he succumbs to that great dragon that lies in wait.
]]>To be clear: Daft Punk are not anti-technology, or even anti-computer (they readily admit that RAM could not have been made without them). But they do have a certain amount of ire for the normalizing aspect technology can have upon music, how lines of code are unable to recreate the variables that sprout from relatively organic techniques.
“We were never able to connect with using computers as musical instruments,” Bangalter shrugs. “We've always relied on hardware components—old drum machines, synthesizers—but it was more like a chaotic electrical lab with wires everywhere. We tried to make music with laptops in the mid 2000s, but it was really hard to create from within the computer without putting things into it. In a computer, everything is recallable all the time, but life is a succession of events that only happen once.”
…let’s take another step back from heroism altogether; is it good to encourage your young boys (or girls) to be a hero? Is that natural, deep, basic desire to be the protagonist in the story of your life admirable? Does it lead to Christian virtues?
In my experience as a boy (and even now, as oft-day-dreamer adult), the desire to be a hero almost always manifested as a desire to attain my existential justification through personal greatness. It was an alternate salvation—a salvation through being a heroic savior. If I could do something heroic, even if it cost me everything, then I would know that I mattered. I was worth something. My existence would be assured, and this assurance would be verified by those around me.
I still want to live a heroic life. But I don’t think I should. I think I should want to live quietly, to do all that I do until God and for my neighbor, and to do all this without believing that through my quiet suffering I am redeeming myself.
This really jumps out at me because I confess, I want to live a heroic life — or at least, what I think is a heroic life. But is my vision of the heroic life truly Biblical, or has it been shaped by cultural pressures and norms in ways that, though seemingly noble, actually run counter to Christ’s instructions? This is a hard question, and it’s one that’s become increasingly relevant now that I have children of my own, including two sons.
Oh, and then there’s Noble’s response to Metaxas’ criticism of videogames:
Why videogames? Why not point out that watching football isn’t heroic? Or working on cars? Or Tweeting? Or any other of the myriad ways people waste time in the 21st century?
Precisely.
]]>Last month, The Colonel Mustard Amateur Attic Theatre Company announced their epic theatrical spectacle for the summer of 2013: Jurassic Park: The Musical: 3D. As you might recall, the original Jurassic Park: The Musical was put on in 2009, and was one of the first Mustard musical extravaganzas (laying the template for subsequent pieces like Dr. Quinn: The Musical and Gods of the Prairie). It became quite the viral hit, garnering attention on “VH1's Best Week Ever”, Dave Barry, and The Vulture (to name a few).
In August 2013, the Mustard crew will be revisiting their early sensation. Jurassic Park: The Musical is being rebuilt from the ground up, with a new script and score, and will feature some pretty ambitious ideas concerning its presentation in “3D”. I’d say more, but then the Colonel would probably sic a couple of velociraptors on me, and we all know what they do to their prey. (And speaking of velociraptors, the Mustard is currently hosting an open call for dinosaur actors.)
In order to help fund Jurassic Park: The Musical: 3D, as well as its other artistic ventures, the Colonel Mustard is participating in “Give To Lincoln Day” on May 16, during which people can make donations to Lincoln, NE charities. If you like ambitious low-budget community theatre projects, or if you just happen to like dinosaurs (or at least, people dressed up in silly dinosaur costumes), then the Mustard could certainly use your help.
]]>]]>I grew up in the Evangelical Christian church, my family usually falling on the conservative and exhaustively theological sides of religion. I left, about three years ago. I find that the less time I spend around Christians, the harder it is to have empathy for their ways of seeing and living.
That’s why I was so happy when I began to learn spiritual empathetic lessons from a videogame.
[…]
Thanks to [the creators of Proteus], I was at least a little bit closer to the Christians in my life, in a way I would have never expected. I know now a bit of what they feel, even if it is just a parallel sensation. Now, when a bible-believer talks to me about the awe they feel, as well as the subsequent worship that such awe produces, I get it. I get it a little.
I haven’t questioned my belief that mecha stories are substandard fare because, well, primarily that would give me one more direction in which to apportion my already far-too-small disposable income. Also: though I read comics all the time and spend at least six hours per week writing about them, at least I don’t read the ones with big robots on the covers because that’s infantile. So when I sat down and read Knights of Sidonia and had my worldview shattered? That was a feeling both delicious and terrifying. After all: I am now someone who reads and enjoys mecha manga.
I've been a fan of Tsutomu Nihei’s previous stuff (Blame!, Biomega) and really do need to check out his latest title.
]]>It’s interesting to note, then, how this reporter, his colleagues at The Times and journalists at other papers have handled the political implications of the Gosnell story. This Gosnell story is nowhere near as bad as someone saying something untrue about rape. Not that bad. It’s just about a convicted murderer whose abortions fell a bit too far on the post-birth and malpractice side of things than the prebirth side and resulted in an untold number of deaths and scarings and disease spreading.
[…]
Don’t get me wrong, while I will fully agree with the New York Times that a politician saying something stupid deserves at least 250 breathless stories in a three-month span and that the country’s most salacious serial murder trial, that of an abortion doctor to boot, should only begrudgingly and weakly be covered after extreme pressure, I wonder if maybe there’s not room for slight improvement here.
Zing.
]]>We forget that physical objects are also just specific embodiments — or presentations — of their content and function. A paperback book and an ebook file are two embodiments of the text they each contain; the ebook isn’t descended from the paperback. They’re siblings, from different media spheres, one of which happens to have been invented more recently.
The biggest intellectual stumbling-block we’re facing is the fallacy that just because physical embodiments came first, they’re also somehow canonical. The publishing industry is choking itself to death with that assumption, despite readily available examples of innovative, digitally-native approaches.
Also this:
]]>Nobody is arguing that a notepaper icon might be easier to locate when the user wants to write down some text, or that a telephone handset is much less intimidating than an audio waveform or some other abstract symbol. That’s reasonable, and fair enough up to a point.
But the issue is that, inevitably, we don’t practise restraint. It’s difficult to do so with an approach that celebrates excess, inspirising designers to actually disdain others’ work for lack of realistic shadow-casting, texture effects, or other such monumentally point-missing trivia.
The reality is that skeuomorphism enshrines and validates a failure of vision, and even worse, a failure to capitalise on the medium.
Firefox intentionally removing support for the <blink> element draws a hard line demarcating the end of a wildly popular primitive Web animation which preceded today’s streaming videos and humorous GIFs. The change may be bittersweet for a certain weird variety of Internet nostalgist, but in most other senses it’s probably for the best: it’s a fantastically annoying bit of code and shouldn’t exist at all.
Even though no sensible designer has used the <blink> element in years, its complete disappearance is still disconcerting. Sites like the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine store old versions of sites for historical purposes, in some cases dating back as far as the mid-nineties, but soon enough it may be impossible to view the sites as they actually appeared at the time. Geocities was finally shut down in 2009, but since it was such an important part of the early Web, the contents of many of those sites are still available via a massive six-hundred-and-forty-gigabyte archive posted on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.
As a developer, I’m certainly not sad to see the <blink> tag’s support finally disappearing, but Assar raises an interesting question: is it wise to lose a piece of Web history — even one so lamentable — so easily? Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, and whatnot. Via MG Siegler.
Iron Man 3 recently came out, and it will be followed by many more summer blockbusters — e.g., Star Trek Into Darkness, Pacific Rim, After Earth, Man of Steel — but there’s one film that trumps them all in my book: The World’s End, the final film in Edgar Wright’s “Three Flavours Cornetto” trilogy (which began with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz). Synopsis:
In The World’s End, 20 years after attempting an epic pub crawl, five childhood friends reunite when one of them becomes hellbent on trying the drinking marathon again. They are convinced to stage an encore by mate Gary King (Simon Pegg), a 40-year-old man trapped at the cigarette end of his teens, who drags his reluctant pals to their hometown and once again attempts to reach the fabled pub - The World’s End. As they attempt to reconcile the past and present, they realise the real struggle is for the future, not just theirs but humankind’s. Reaching The World’s End is the least of their worries.
The previous films in the trilogy were loving send-ups of different genres — zombie movies in Shaun of the Dead, buddy cop action movies in Hot Fuzz — and with The World’s End, Wright et al. are clearly looking to both lampoon and lovingly reference alien invasion movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The World’s End comes out August 23 in the States, and stars Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, and Martin Freeman, to name a few.
]]>I’m actually kind of glad that this Star Trek/Transformers crossover toy (courtesy of deviantART member Unicron9) didn’t come out when I was 12. I don’t think my young mind could’ve survived this much awesome hitting it all at once.
]]>Don Peris, the primary guitarist and arranger for the dreamy folk-pop act The Innocence Mission, has just released a new solo album. Titled The Old Century, it’s another lovely showcase for Peris’ understated yet graceful and evocative guitar-work. Listen to the album’s opening track, “ElectroStar” below.
The Old Century is currently available from Jemez Mountain Records and can be purchased/streamed from The Innocence Mission’s Bandcamp page.
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