Recently in the PopCult Category

I'm always on the lookout  for interesting stories that one can tell with statistics -- and cautionary tales about misusing statistics in order to create news where there isn't any.

Via MetaFilter -- this OK Cupid article breaks down responses to user-generated dating profile questions. Green states were more likely to answer "yes" than the national average (yellow), and red states were more likely to answer "no".  Note that this doesn't even come close to representing a statistical average of the population -- just the answers collected by the OK Cupid dating service.

Would you date someone just for the sex?

data set: 448,000 people answered

The answers to the question about daily showering are also worth a look.

The first few panels of a 12-panel cartoon.

Thanks for the suggestion, Mike.

With the recent release of the new Star Trek, I started to wonder how is this going to affect the kids? Thankfully, mine have heard of and have watched plenty of the original series, so I didn't have to worry about their state of mind. But there are a lot of kids out there who think that this new movie is Star Trek. That it's some flashy action adventure space movie with chiseled young actors and massive special effects. While that's all well and good, since it's a reboot for the purpose of gathering new fans, I think it's important that kids have a sense of history when it comes to things as influential as Star Trek. GeekDad, Wired

My 7-year-old daughter just finished watching a YouTube version of More Tribbles, More Troubles, the 1970s animated return of the Tribbles.

The embedded preview of Evercracked! was very, very slow when I checked it just now, so I haven't watched it, but the UK Guardian article on videogame documentaries also includes some links to existing movies.

The King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters
A fascinating look at the bizarre rivalry between gamers Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell as they vie for dominance of Nintendo's Donkey Kong coin-op. Met with huge critical acclaim on its release two years ago.

Chasing Ghosts
Joyfully nostalgic ode to the arcades of the early eighties. Performed well in film festivals in 2007, but is hard to track down now.

8Bit
Described as, "a mélange of a rocumentary, art expose and a culture-critical investigation" this is a more cerebral approach to the subject matter, analysing the impact of game graphics on art and music, with a nod toward the chiptune scene.

Frag
Reasonably recent documentary on professional gaming circuit, considering the dedication of the players but also the corruption, money and drugs seemingly blighting the emerging sport.

I hope soon to see the forthcoming Get Lamp on this list.

If you're a fan of lifehacking, you'll already be familiar with some of these issues. I'm blogging this because it's a good example of doing justice to an opposing view, giving a good presentation of the strongest objections to multitasking. 

If the pundits clogging my RSS reader can be trusted (the ones I check up on occasionally when I don't have any new e-mail), our attention crisis is already chewing its hyperactive way through the very foundations of Western civilization. Google is making us stupid, multitasking is draining our souls, and the "dumbest generation" is leading us into a "dark age" of bookless "power browsing." Adopting the Internet as the hub of our work, play, and commerce has been the intellectual equivalent of adopting corn syrup as the center of our national diet, and we've all become mentally obese. Formerly well-rounded adults are forced to MacGyver worldviews out of telegraphic blog posts, bits of YouTube videos, and the first nine words of Times editorials. Schoolkids spread their attention across 30 different programs at once and interact with each other mainly as sweatless avatars. (One recent study found that American teenagers spend an average of 6.5 hours a day focused on the electronic world, which strikes me as a little low; in South Korea, the most wired nation on earth, young adults have actually died from exhaustion after multiday online-gaming marathons.) We are, in short, terminally distracted. And distracted, the alarmists will remind you, was once a synonym for insane. (Shakespeare: "poverty hath distracted her.")

This doomsaying strikes me as silly for two reasons. First, conservative social critics have been blowing the apocalyptic bugle at every large-scale tech-driven social change since Socrates' famous complaint about the memory-destroying properties of that newfangled technology called "writing." (A complaint we remember, not incidentally, because it was written down.) And, more practically, the virtual horse has already left the digital barn. It's too late to just retreat to a quieter time. Our jobs depend on connectivity. Our pleasure-cycles--no trivial matter--are increasingly tied to it. Information rains down faster and thicker every day, and there are plenty of non-moronic reasons for it to do so. The question, now, is how successfully we can adapt. -- Sam Anderson

This essay clearly identifies a thesis, in the paragraphs I've quoted above. But then it spends a long section arguing precisely the opposite of the thesis.

My freshmen are often so used to getting their academic information through bulleted lists and bold keywords, so that they skim for the main ideas and only read the connecting text if they can't instantly get the gist of the page.  But the traditional essay requires readers to pay attention to a chain of ideas, leading from an opening question, through all the potential objections, to a conclsuion. Students who aren't familiar with this structure will often quote from the "con" part of an essay, mistakenly attributing to author A an idea that author A has cited only in order to tear it town.

I remember, as a high school sophomore, that some of my classmates were horrified by "A Modest Proposal," because they read it at the surface level, and didn't grasp the irony. (They also apparently didn't read the introductory summary or the discussion questions, but that's another issue.)

The following search on our campus -- for a published mystery author qualified to teach creative writing -- has been extended, and will continue until filled. Candidates interested in this position should apply immediately, as we will be considering applicants over the summer. -- Mike Arnzen

Last night, I went to see the new Star Trek movie with a member of the computer science faculty. A math professor was hoping to come, but had a change of plans. The previews suggested it would be a bit intense for me to take the kids to see it, but now that I've seen the show, I think it will be OK.  You have to know your kids though -- the opening sequence pushes some buttons that I didn't expect to have pushed in action film, and the combination of tug-at-the-heartstrings and pulse-pounding action in the opening few minutes might be a bit overwhelming.

I haven't shown my kids the whole run of classic Trek, mostly because I'd rather do other things with them besides watch TV. 

They do know a handful of the best episodes -- the ones that are really worth taking time to see (such as The Doomsday Machine and The Trouble with Tribbles). They haven't seen any of the later incarnations of the show, nor any of the movies.  What with all my wife's old videotapes of Dr. Who, and the complete run of Babylon 5 (dutifully taped by my sister and mailed to us in batches), we already have a big enough backlog of good TV that we're not watching at the moment.

As for the remake... I don't mind at all that they redesigned the sets and models to look futuristic to a 21st-century audience. Communicators and phasers are still cool.  As if to atone for the snail-paced original Trek movie (thirty years ago... 1979), there were no talky briefing room scenes -- they handled all the exposition during the action sequences, and the turbolift is still a great location for two characters to have a private conversation.  All the various characters have been tweaked just a bit, so that we recognize their iconic nature, but also see them change.  The movie has more of an ensemble feel, which is something The Next Generation developed well.

My geek-boy katra can't quite grasp what the producer was thinking when he put Delta Vega that close to Vulcan.  The engine room set was a cop-out. I know they filmed it in a brewery, but I wonder just how much money they spent on the little tribute to Agustus Gloop... was it some elaborate reference to certain characters being wet behind the ears?

Speaking of cop... where have I heard the thrumming sound made by the flying motorcycle?  It feels like an old friend, but I can't place it. Blade Runner?

The amount of lens flare, especially in the bridge scenes, was noticeably distracting. I think the goal was to tie the bridge scenes in with the CGI sequences, since the space shots also featured lots of animated lens flare. The closing credits even features an elaborate CGI sequence that renders dust or some other kind of imperfections on the camera lens. But I found that whole concept -- the shaky camera cinema verite conceit -- bothersome. The original series used handheld cameras to occasional good effect... would occasionally march into the turbolift behind Kirk, or the camera would do a 360 around Spock while he is doing a mind-meld.  It used to be far too expensive to do special effects on a moving image -- that's why the actors in the original series stood still while the transporter beam dissolved them away.

When there's reason, within the story, to watch hand-held footage -- someone's recording from a hand-held tricorder, for instance -- then I'd say, bring on the shakies. But surely in the future there will be digital stabilizer. But when I see lens flare on a CGI shot, it hurts my ability to enjoy the scene, because I know the producers aren't trying to make me feel like I'm there, floating in space with a God's eye view of the battle. Instead, they're trying to make me feel like I'm watching documentary footage.

I completely understand the need to dirty down the models and make the props and sets more functional, but I found it distracting to be reminded so often that I'm watching a movie... I just want a direct sensory infusion of space opera goodness... I was annoyed by the amount of effort the producers put into simulating the constraints of modern movie cameras.  When the shaky camera trend has run its course, its overuse in this movie will make this Star Trek outing look dated.

Having picked my nits, I will say that there were a couple of beauty shots of the new Enterprise, some surprising revelations about character backstory (now we know why Spock never took the Kobayashi Maru test), and a bold and brash feel that was just thrilling to watch.

I know that my bridge playset has long since gone to the big warp core in the sky, and I can't seem to find the shoebox where I kept my original Star Trek action figures from the 70s.  

Even as a kid, I remember being frustrated that the playset didn't really look all that much like the bridge, though the captain's chair is a reasonable replica. Those little stools never did much for me -- the action figures kept falling off them, so I replaced them with blocks from my beloved Alpha Truck (which did double duty as the shuttlecraft).

Anyway...

The Star Trek Bridge playset was, hands down, the best toy I owned as a child. I played with it for approximately 10,000 hours. Especially the whirly-twirly transporter cubicle. I loved the psychedelic cardboard viewscreens, the tippy chairs and furniture, the stick-on UI for same that was as inscrutable and ridiculous as the authentic show computers. This toy had the magic, a vinyl-covered, detailed, configurable kind of magic that made you want to play with it for hours and hours on end. -- Cory Doctorow

While hiding from the stack of final papers, I took a break in the cafeteria. Some of my colleagues were talking about the new Star Trek movie, and the conversation shifted to what's on TV now.

My daily household duties include putting the kids to bed. My wife doesn't really do mornings, and homeschooling doesn't start until she gets up, so the kids tend to stay up late.  So I spend every prime time reading bedtime stories and supervising the brushing of teeth and the donning of pajamas.

I should point out that today's TV has evolved in order to compete with video games and the internet... Lost and Battlestar Galactica and ER all engage brain cells in a way that assumes the viewer is intelligent, and does not need laugh tracks or "waah-waah-waah-waaaah" trombone noises in order to respond emotionally to a complex story with many dramatic twists and turns. So I'm not ranting about the poor quality of TV.

I'm sure that, if we had cable, I would find something worth watching. But that's precisely the reason I don't want cable. Ever. I haven't really followed a TV show since Babylon 5.  I've never seen an episode of Lost or the new Battlestar Galactica, though I have read online summaries of the plot, and I can understand the draw of those shows. 

When I'm free for the evening, rather than make the next two hours disappear into the boob tube black hole, I'd much rather make a Blender3D animation and upload it to YouTube, or convert a literary work I've never read before into an audio file so that I can listen to it during tomorrow's commute, or edit a Wikipedia page, or update my blog, or just noodle around in my server logs and figure out why I suddenly got that burst of traffic from Ireland.

I'd rather DO something.

I recently came across a talk by Clay Shirkey, who uses the term "cognitiive surplus" to describe the creative potential that we're not using when we sit and watch consumable TV.

I was being interviewed by a TV producer to see whether I should be on their show, and she asked me, "What are you seeing out there that's interesting?"

I started telling her about the Wikipedia article on Pluto. You may remember that Pluto got kicked out of the planet club a couple of years ago, so all of a sudden there was all of this activity on Wikipedia. The talk pages light up, people are editing the article like mad, and the whole community is in an ruckus--"How should we characterize this change in Pluto's status?" And a little bit at a time they move the article--fighting offstage all the while--from, "Pluto is the ninth planet," to "Pluto is an odd-shaped rock with an odd-shaped orbit at the edge of the solar system."

So I tell her all this stuff, and I think, "Okay, we're going to have a conversation about authority or social construction or whatever." That wasn't her question. She heard this story and she shook her head and said, "Where do people find the time?" That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, "No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you've been masking for 50 years." -- Clay Shirky

THERE is nothing particularly unusual about the living room of the two-story town house that Scott Veazie shares with his wife in Washougal, Wash., except for one piece of furniture in a corner: a full-size replica of the captain's chair from the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise, as seen in the original "Star Trek" television series.

[...]

"It's not the most comfortable of chairs," Mr. Veazie said. "The arms are too low and they're too far apart. Now I know why William Shatner was always leaning forward in it."

There is another possible explanation, suggested Eddie Paskey, who as Mr. Shatner's stand-in on "Star Trek" spent much time in the chair during camera and lighting set-ups. "Early on, Bill sat down, leaned back, and it went over backwards," he said. -- Thomas Vinciguerra, New York Times

When I was first watching Star Trek reruns as a kid in the 70s, Eddie Paskey was a "Guy Who Always Gets Killed."  (He played an extra that was killed off, but got cast again the next week as another extra, and wisely kept his mouth shut.) I was a little miffed later on, when I learned the word "redshirt."

Since the NYT is apparently issuing takedown notices to bloggers who use NYT photos ("Pop quiz: You're a troubled media dinosaur struggling to find your way on the Web. What steps can you take to actively discourage people from linking to you, thus reducing your pageviews and revenue?"-- Cory Doctorow) I will instead post my own 3D depiction of this famous chair.

I smell trouble. Via Trekmovie.com:

Genki's "Red Shirt" cologne (whose tag line "Because Tomorrow May Never Come" is priceless) celebrates the sacrifices of those often nameless crew of the USS Enterprise. Described appropriately as a cologne for those with a "devotion to living each day as it could be your last" the cologne has top notes of green mandarin, bergamot, and lavender, with base notes of leather and grey musk.

Live every day as if it could be your last, with 'Red Shirt' cologne

Also available: Tiberius, and Pon Farr.

"Playing video games all day, alone and friendless, is is simply the best way that we have to prepare our children for a life of solitude in a barren wasteland."

Great little feature on a nostalgic pleasure.

The Ferris wheel takes you nowhere but up and around. And it is precisely the lack of direction that makes you feel as if you are going everywhere. It doesn't feed us, doesn't clothe us, doesn't give us a home. But man, we're told, does not live on bread alone. --Stefany Anne Golberg

I bugged out of work a few hours early today so I could meet up with the family for a matinee showing of Coraline. The local theater had a rather defensive home-grown sign explaining that the extra $2.50 they were charging per ticket pays for the cost of renting the 3D projection equipment from Disney. And then there are those big bins that try to guilt us into "recycling" the glasses (so they can sell them back to us the next time). Maybe if they actually refunded you a dollar for turning in the glasses?

But I digress.

I read this book to my kids a few weeks ago. The slow pace of the opening of the movie not only perfectly matches the tone of the book, but it also lets us drink in the scenery (very convincingly rendered in 3D... in the first few minutes of the movie I noticed some jerkiness, but soon got accustomed to it).  As part of the rising action just before the climax, Coraline has to collect three objects (souls in the book, eyes in the movie -- or, rather, pairs of eyes, that are always represented by a single round object... don't ask).  The scene in which Coraline gets the first object is a psychological drama in the book, and I recall it was almost as effective as the riddle contest between Bilbo and Gollum in The Hobbit.  In the Coraline movie, this bit appears as a lickety-split action sequence, and from there Coraline acquires the next two ball thingies so quickly that there's little time to notice a character transformation.

The book has Coraline, through her force of will, transform herself from plucky orphan Newt to surrogate mother Ripley, and it's a thrill to read. In the climactic chapters of the book, the third-person narration keeps us out of Coraline's head, so that we're just following along as she charges ahead into danger; we don't know exactly what she's planning, but by this time we've learned to trust the heroine, so it's a thrill to read along and enjoy her courage.  In the movie, a string of action sequences -- admittedly striking -- takes over the space where the book had ratcheted up the psychological tension, and the change diminished my enjoyment a bit.

The climactic encounter was very faithful to the book, but the "You thought it was over but it isn't yet" was weaker in the movie because it involved the timely return of the sidekick -- something that's more appropriate for a buddy film.  I realize that we can't spend an hour of screen time listening to Coraline's internal monlogue, hence the new sidekick; but once you've created him, you've got to got to give him a subplot and an arc of his own, which leads to his role in the battle that comes after you think you've seen the climax. 

Some very powerful visual effects having to do with the Other Mother's malevolent manipulation of the environment are very well done, giving the film a new set of visual references that added texture and more coherence than the talky attempts to explain what's going on. 

I won't go see it again while it's in the theaters, but the 3D effects were good enough that I'd consider going to see another 3D movie if the effects were that smoothly integrated into the experience. (It seems it would be easy to do that with CGI films.)

Cantina

The current management of this rather seedy venue doesn't much care about appearances, apparently. Nonetheless, it's become one of the hottest spots in the area, attracting surly alcoholics from all around. A variety of local acts, the vast majority unrelentingly terrible, play here every Tuesday night.

Coincidentally, it's Tuesday night. A host of unsavory-looking people makes up your audience for the night. They're all staring at you expectantly.

A fake plastic guitar lies on the ground in front of you. Bolted to the wall is a television screen, dark and foreboding.

>_

So it begins. Text adventures, in which a world is presented in prose and interaction is through typed commands, are one of the oldest forms of computer game; music/rhythm games like Guitar Hero, in which a world is presented in dazzling color and blaring sound and interaction is through an instrument-shaped novelty peripheral, are one of the newest. When programmer Bill Meltsner combined the two recently in the satirical Champion of Guitars, the result was a textbook example of how an amusing artwork can catch on and go viral in a wired-up community that loves poking fun at itself. It's also a textbook example of the power of the so-called "lazyweb," the blogger practice of tossing a good idea out there in the hope that someone, somewhere, with more resources or less sloth, might make it a reality. -- Darren Zenko, The Toronto Star

As I was putting my 10-year-old son to bed tonight, as usual we had a long, free-ranging, unrushed conversation. Somehow I mentioned the missing Doctor Who tapes.

Peter got very thoughtful.

"If I had a time machine, I could go back to the moment those tapes disappeared. And I could bring them forward in time, so that they wouldn't be lost. But there would be one problem. By going back in time to the moment the tapes disappeared, and keeping them from being lost, wouldn't I be responsible for making them disappear? But I wouldn't have ever gone back in time unless the tapes had disappeared."

I told Peter he had stumbled across a closed causal loop -- a concept that I introduce when I teach the play Oedipus Tyrannos. (In that play, the protagonist hears a prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother, leaves the court of his foster-father in order to escape the prophecy, kills a stranger who just happens to be his real father, and ends up marrying a widow who just happens to be his mother.)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a horde of the undead in possession of insatiable hunger for the brains of the living must be in want of a Jane Austin remix.(via)

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies covers the same ground as the original masterpiece - only that ground is full freshly-vacated graves.  The "strange plague" has been the scourge of England for years.  London has been walled off, and the countryside is littered with zombies (politely referred to as "unmentionables").  Attacks occur on a daily basis - overwhelming the conventional army, and leaving England's defense to a small band of highly-trained hunter/killers.

The Bennet sisters have spent their lives training in the deadly arts, and are considered among the finest slayers of the undead.  None is more feared or admired than the lovely Elizabeth - a serious girl who has no time for silly things like love.  But when Elizabeth meets a haughty fellow slayer named Darcy, she discovers there's one thing she can't defend against...Cupid's arrow (cue sweeping romantic music).

Ricardo Montalban (1920-2009). My kids know him as the grandfather in Spy Kids 2 and 3.

Let's hope they lay him to rest dressed in a spotless white suit, in a casket lined in soft, Corinthian leather.

He will always be Captain Kirk's finest foe, the would-be conqueror who first tried to steal the Enterprise in the classic Star Trek episode "Space Seed" and then finally robbed Kirk of his best friend in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Montalban's magnetic, robust presence; that voice that sounded like a ride over rolling hills -- he made Khan Noonien Singh the worst kind of despot: the kind you're pretty sure you'd die for. --Mark Bernardin, Entertainment Weekly

Thanks for the silly, wonderful suggestion, Josh.

Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary responds to the urban legend that his song "Puff, the Magic Dragon" is an extended metaphor for drug use. He then mockingly applies the critical lens of drug metaphors to The Star-Spangled Banner, before the group launches into "Puff."
 

During the song, we see a montage of people in the audience of all ages singing along; the unspoken message is clearly "Don't analyze, just enjoy."

I wonder if I can use this in my literary criticism class. This won't be the first time that a work that was created by an artist who had one particular vision in mind was taken up by a group of people who saw something different in it.  Should we just accept the Coca-Cola commercials that try to make an iced beverage part of wintertime Christmas rituals? (Ever wonder why Santa wears red and white?)  Should we accept what the recording industry tells about the technology behind file-sharing -- that because it can potentially be used for copyright violations, the technology itself should be illegal?  Should the ancient Romans have accepted their bread and circuses without troubling themselves to question the motives of the politicians who supplied their entertainment?

I don't at all mean to suggest Paul Yarrow has any sinister motives (well, except for that incident with the 14-year-old fan back in 1970); rather, I'm gathering notes for my "Literary Criticism" class, for which I expect I will have to overcome some resistance to the value of theoretical readings.

Any group of specialists will have their own jargon, their own methods, their own shortcuts, their own sense of identifying the boundaries of received knowledge, and their own threshold for noticing where what looks, to an outsider or beginner, like a simple concept (such as "the author's intended meaning") reveals great gaps that invite further exploration: By "author's intention," do we mean the author's intent when he wrote the first draft, the author's intent when the poem was first published, the author's intent when he agreed to censor certain passages in order to get it a wider printing, or the author's intent when he changed a few words years later when re-publishing the work in an anthology, or the author's intent when a reporter tracked him down years later and asked him some questions about the poem in question?

I do point out to my students that lit-crit isn't "anything does."  There are more *possible* interpretations than *probable* ones, and Occam's Razor reminds us that even the *probable* interpretations are not always *necessary*.

Tropes are storytelling devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations.

The site's name is misleading... while there are plenty of TV tropes, you'll also find examples from journalism, comics, video games, etc. From the "air vent escape" to "loser archetypes" to the "hard work montage," this is loads of fun.

Oh, and it's a wiki! (Via.)

"Anchors and journalists have become part of self-reverential celebrity culture. Everything goes back to 'me.' It's driven somewhat by technological and economical change. Still, I haven't seen them pulled kicking and screaming into this," said Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University.

"Anchors can be bigger stars than the nominees at a political convention. They're not only brand names, but whole mini-corporations who supply the news, tell us what it means, and then turn around and be news themselves," he added. -- Washington Times

"The message behind every movie and book, behind every theme park and T-shirt is that our children's world needs Disney," he says.

"So they absolutely must go to see the next Disney movie, which we'll also want to give them on DVD as a birthday present.

"They will be happier if they live the full Disney experience; and thousands of families around the world buy into this deeper message as they flock to Disneyland."

He continues: "This is the new pilgrimage that children desire, a rite of passage into the meaning of life according to Disney.

"Where once morality and meaning were available as part of our free cultural inheritance, now corporations sell them to us as products." -- Telegraph

A few years ago I prepared a "Disney World View" course, but I haven't taught it yet. I'm just blogging this in case I get the chance to offer it again.

Jason Scott has started a new blog that will discuss the progress of his documentary, GET LAMP.  Here's a good entry on the contents of Steve Meretzky's basement.

As part of the GET LAMP project, I've been collecting artifacts and images throughout the commercial heydays of text adventures, and nobody got bigger than Infocom in the early 1980s. And Steve was one of the big designers at Infocom, creating or co-creating some of the most lasting games in the genre: Planetfall, Sorcerer, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, Stationfall... and then went on after Infocom to make many other classics as well. He is a towering figure in the games industry, recognized as one of the greats, among other designers who have produced one-tenth his output. But beyond his place in the history of text adventures, he's also acutely aware of the history of text adventures, and the process, and the trends of a gaming industry.

The web today is not the same as it was during the last presidential election.

Old media, apparently, can learn new media tricks. Not since 1960, when John F. Kennedy won in part because of the increasingly popular medium of television, has changing technology had such an impact on the political campaigns and the organizations covering them.

For many viewers, the 2008 election has become a kind of hybrid in which the dividing line between online and off, broadcast and cable, pop culture and civic culture, has been all but obliterated.

Many of the media outlets influencing the 2008 election simply were not around in 2004. YouTube did not exist, and Facebook barely reached beyond the Ivy League. There was no Huffington Post to encourage citizen reporters, so Mr. Obama's comment about voters clinging to guns or religion may have passed unnoticed. These sites and countless others have redefined how many Americans get their political news.

When viewers settle in Tuesday night to watch the election returns, they will also check text messages for alerts, browse the Web for exit poll results and watch videos distributed by the campaigns. And many folks will let go of the mouse only to pick up the remote and sample an array of cable channels with election coverage -- from Comedy Central to BBC America.  David Carr and Brian Stelter, New York Times

During the Great Depression, Americans flocked to the movies to escape the harsh realities of their daily lives. As the stock market tumbled and loved ones went off to war, Americans disappeared into dark theaters, where Shirley Temple sang and tap danced her way into their heavy hearts.

Now, as the nation faces arguably the worst financial crisis since the Depression, video games may be playing the role movies once filled in hard economic times. (NPR)

CMJ_Ewoks.mp3 (2min 10sec, 2.2Mb)

The audio is a little over 2 minutes long. Listen to my daughter's final tearful, generous, heart-felt wish for George Lucas, and then take a look at the chronology below.

Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985)
Howard the Duck (1986)

When I went off to college (late 80s) I bought a handful of very cheap classical music cassette tapes, simply because I needed some music I could listen to on headphones to drown out the noise in the dorms.  I've also got a CD of classical marches, but again the reason is practical -- I put it on when I have to clean up old papers or my e-mail in-box, and the music helps me stay focused.

But I don't really like listening to music.