PopCult: June 2005 Archive Page

Modern English has given us two terms we need to explain this phenomenon: "geeking out" and "vegging out." To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal - and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a passive state and allow sounds and images to wash over you without troubling yourself too much about what it all means..... The first "Star Wars" movie 28 years ago was distinguished by healthy interplay between veg and geek scenes. In the climactic sequence, where rebel fighters attacked the Death Star, we repeatedly cut away from the dogfights and strafing runs - the purest kind of vegging-out material - to hushed command bunkers where people stood around pondering computer displays, geeking out on the strategic progress of the battle. --Neal Stephenson --Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out (NY Times)

Hmm... I think the scenes in the command bunkers were simply there to give Carrie Fisher something to do during the battle. Well, having C-3PO there to worry about Artoo was also a nice touch.

As theorists became endowed chairs, department heads, series editors, and MLA presidents, as they were profiled in the New York Times Magazine and invited to lecture around the world, the institutional effects of Theory displaced its intellectual nature. It didn't have to happen, but that'sthe way the new crop of graduate students experienced it. Not only were too many Theory articles and books published and too many Theory papers delivered, but too many high-profile incursions of the humanities into public discourse had a Theory provenance. The academic gossip in Lingua Franca highlighted Theory much more than traditional scholarship, David Lodge'spopular novels portrayed the spread of theory as a human comedy, and People Magazine hired a prominent academic feminist as its TV critic. One theorist became known for finding her ?inner life,? another for a skirt made of men'sneckties, another for unionizing TAs. It was fun and heady, especially when conservatives struck back with profiles of Theorists in action such as Roger Kimball'sTenured Radicals, sallies which enraged many academics and soundly defeated them in public settings, but pleased the more canny ones who understood that being denounced was better than not being talked about at all (especially if you had tenure).

The cumulative result was that the social scene of Theory overwhelmed the intellectual thrust. --Mark Baurerlein --Theory's Empire (Butterflies and Wheels)

Now that the theory movement has firmly established itself in academia, faculty members who want to introduce theory have a lot of history to cover. Is it legitimate to say that theory is somehow "over" when people outside the circle of theorist-activists learn it and teach it?

The high-def format's merciless gaze isn't solely a matter of screen resolution. Color is a factor, too. For years, government standards have limited the range of colors available to broadcasters, based on the technological limits of the time. With high-def, more colors can be used, including some formerly forbidden shades of red -- which means that blotches, zits and tiny nose-veins can be presented with the brutal clarity of a surgery textbook.

''It's almost too realistic, too digital and computery,'' complains Alexis Vogel, a veteran celebrity makeup artist who recently worked on ''Stacked,'' a high-def show starring Pamela Anderson. ''We'd all like to go back to the old days.'' Makeup artists are now engaged in an arms race with the new medium. But they face a paradox: while makeup is more necessary than ever, its artifice is more obvious. You can't slather on powder when every grain looks like a boulder on your client's face. And interestingly, many cosmeticians predict that high-def could actually reduce the amount of plastic surgery in Hollywood, because the tiny seams look Frankensteinian at such high resolution. High-def is, in essence, a medium peculiarly unsuited to dissembling. ''It's harder to change people from their natural form,'' Vogel adds. --Clive Thompson --Not Ready for Their Close-Up (NY Times)

News sites used the event as a chance to experiment with methods of getting news out quickly. CNN.com, for example, put a scorecardlike page up ahead of the verdict, with a color-coded system in place to mark "guilty" or "not guilty," as each juror's specific decision was read.

But rival MSNBC.com appeared to get the news out first with a breaking news alert at the top of its screen that said simply: "Jury finds Jackson find not guilty of lewd act on child." --Ina Fried --Cyberspace races to offer Jackson verdict (C|Net News.com)

[T]he process by which a fringe subculture, through its idiosyncratic reception of Tolkien's fiction, ultimately came to define the "medieval" imagery, pacing, and plotting of one of the most popular film series in history is a relatively recent development. What was once a conception of Tolkien's medieval fantasy realm held by an eccentric few has since become the predominant visualization of the medieval world-- Tolkien's and otherwise-- held by the generations, like Menand's nephew, raised in a world of personal computers. --Courtney M. Booker --Byte-Sized Middle Ages: Tolkein, Film, and the Digital Imagination (PDF) (University of British Columbia)

The article includes an unsurprising but detailed treatment of the relationship between Tolkien, Dungeons and Dragons, and Colossal Cave Adventure, drawing from canonical sources.

I don't think I learned anything knew about Adventure from reading this article, but Booker has connected enough of the dots that I'm relieved I can just quote her him in an article I'm working on, rather than have to write it all out myself.

If you're on a slow connection, try Google's HTML cache.

One of the many reasons why a PDF isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. The PDF doesn't contain any of the publication information. I had to get it from the author's homepage.

"Byte-sized Middle Ages: Tolkien, Film, and the Digital Imagination," Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 35 (2004): 145-74.

Update, 12 Jan 2006: The URL moved. I've updated it.

Lau never expected to become a fortune-cookie writer. After graduating from Columbia with degrees in engineering and business, he joined Bank of America, then ran a company that exported logs from the Pacific Northwest to China. In the early eighties, he was hired by a Chinatown noodle manufacturer, which eventually expanded into fortune cookies. The firm bought the Long Island City plant, and it soon became apparent that its antiquated catalogue of fortunes would have to be updated. (?Find someone as gay as you are,? one leftover from the nineteen-forties read.) ?We knew we needed to add new sayings,? Lau said. ?I was chosen because my English was the best of the group, not because I'm a poet.? --Jeremy Olshan --Odd Jobs Dept: Cookie Master (New Yorker)

The Love Bug is still a 1963 Volkswagen with a mind of its own and headlights that can freakin' blink. Herbie is back with Ms. Lohan in the driver's seat. The VW's look and story hasn't changed since actor Dean Herbie rode in "Herbie Rides Again," "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo" and -- perhaps the movie that saw the franchise reach its nadir -- "Herbie Goes Bananas." --Ed Tahaney --Movies try auto focus (NY Daily News)

A puffy article with a silly pun for a headline (get it, "auto-focus"?).

Nobody's perfect. When I was a student, I once mistakenly gave two sources the same last name, and later ended up working both of those sources. These things happen, and there really wasn't any way for the copy-editor to know about my goof.

As father of a seven-year-old and a three-year-old, I'm something of an expert on the Herbie franchise, but for the uninitiated, a quick visit to IMDB.com is useful.

There's no "Dean Herbie" in the cast lists of those films. Dean Jones appeared in The Love Bug (1968), Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977), a 1982 TV series, and, briefly, a TV movie also named The Love Bug (1997). He didn't appear in "Herbie Goes Bananas." Only two of the seven "Herbie" titles in IMDB appeared during the 70s, but Tahaney refers to Herbie as a 1970s phenomenon.

John Watson, who teaches journalism ethics and communications law at American, has noticed another phenomenon: Many students, he says, believe that simply working hard -- though not necessarily doing excellent work -- entitles them to an A. "I can't tell you how many times I've heard a student dispute a grade, not on the basis of in-class performance," says Watson, "but on the basis of how hard they tried. I appreciate the effort, and it always produces positive results, but not always the exact results the student wants. We all have different levels of talent."

It's a concept that many students (and their parents) have a hard time grasping. Working hard, especially the night before a test or a paper due date, does not necessarily produce good grades.

"At the age of 50, if I work extremely hard, I can run a mile in eight minutes," says Watson. "I have students who can jog through a mile in seven minutes and barely sweat. They will always finish before me and that's not fair. Or is it?" --Alicia C. Shepard --A's for Everyone! (Washington Post (will expire))

Its doughnuts, available for many years only in the Southeast, had attracted a devoted, even fanatical, customer base. When the company decided to go national, it opened franchises in locations guaranteed to generate buzz -- Manhattan, Los Angeles, Las Vegas -- and customers lined up around the block. By August 2003, KKD was trading at nearly $50 on the New York Stock Exchange, up 235 percent from its initial public offering price of $21 on Nasdaq, and Fortune magazine was calling Krispy Kreme the "hottest brand in the land." For the fiscal year ended in February 2004, the company reported $665.6 million in sales and $94.7 million in operating profit from its nearly 400 locations, including stores in Australia, Canada, and South Korea. --Kremed! (CFO.com)

Wait a minute... $21 x 2.35 = 49.35, so "nearly $50" is accurate. But "up 235%"?

$21 x 1.00 = $21, but I wouldn't say "trading at $21, up 100% from its initial public offering price of $21."

I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that should read "up 135%." Am I wrong?

Much like the film industry, an overemphasis on blockbusters is one of the industry's biggest weaknesses as far as encouraging innovation and creativity, say observers. "Future titles need to offer more than wild shootouts, violent explosions, and the wholesale cheapening of life," says game designer Howard Sherman.

"We've been moving in the wrong direction," says Steve Meretsky, a designer and industry veteran, "toward bigger budgets, centralized decisionmaking by fewer big companies that has led to more licensed games [based on movies and books], and fewer experimental games."

Many of the young talents that might help create those games are also discouraged by the industry's focus on money. --Gloria Goodgale --Video-game industry mulls over the future beyond shoot-'em-ups (Christian Science Monitor)

Ross, a professional actor who had spent years working with theater groups across Canada, knew how to mimic all the voices in "Star Wars" - as well as the fluorescent hum of a lightsaber - when he set about adapting the trilogy for stage. Ross and director T.J. Dawe then devised ways to physically represent each character so that the audience knows who they're watching at any moment. At times, Ross seems to fully embody the roles he's playing; at other times, he relies on a simple gesture as a shorthand. Leia's infamous bun hairstyle, for example, is represented by hands cupped around the ears. The actor isn't afraid to editorialize, either - Obi Wan's nose does a Pinocchio every time he talks about how Luke's father died. --Stephen Humphries --How to do the Star Wars trilogy in 58 minutes (Christian Science Monitor)

The same actor also does a 60-minute Lord of the Rings -- and I'm sure he's spoofing the movies, not the books.

An interesting example of remediation. Much more creative and dependent upon performer talent than the Disney stage versions which re-create the cartoons that re-told stories from other genres. (Don't forget Stoppard's 15-minute Hamlet.)