Why has Star Wars become uncool with the Slashdot crowd?
My take is this: that there are those of us born before the first Star Wars and who mark one of our "cinematic moments" with the memory of going to see Star Wars in 1977. I mean, I certainly have vivid memories of the day I saw the firt Star Wars. I was ten at the time, and it was one of those "important cinematic milestones" for me. (The others were seeing 'Saturday Night Fever', 'Apocalypse Now', and 'Deer Hunter.')
I've heard Kevin Smith mention the same films, in fact (but not the Deer Hunter) as being the films that sorta changed his life.
And there is the post-Star Wars crowd. Those who found themselves to be born after Star Wars -- or after (ugh!) even 'Return of the Jedi'.
I suspect -- although I have no idea -- that the crowd born before Star Wars thinks that this latest round of Star Wars films -- Eps. 1 and 2 -- to be pretty tame, tepid films. Uncool, and very unhip.
The 70's were a great decade for film and 'Star Wars' -- strangely enough -- was sorta the 'capper'. At least I think so. Apocalypse Now and Five Easy Pieces and the King of Marvin Gardens (my other 70's faves) are in there, too -- but Star Wars seemed to come out of nowhere. Even at 10 years old, I realized it was a pretty odd, strange, but wonderful film. And later -- in 1979 -- I felt the same way about Apocalypse Now. Seeing *that* for the first time, blew my mind.
Anyway, I don't mean to start a flame war. Just some observations.
I saw Ep. 2 yesterday was really bored. Lucas has turned the series into some stereotype of itself. Too much eye-candy, badly acted, and devoid of the "fun" that made the first Star Wars so interesting (and good).
This is off-topic (more or less), but I felt an urge to contribute my own personal experience in the pre-digital radio industry:
I used to work for an FM station, too -- KQ102 in Canton, Missouri -- and it was pretty interesting. It was from 1988-1989 -- and seemed to be the time right before "digital" took over everything FM.
Everything we played was on 45s -- vinyl -- and each 45 was rated according to its "tempo."
There were thousands of 45s at the station and about ten different tempo numbers. A #1 song was really, really fast -- and a number 10 was really, really slow.
Someone listened to all the music and -- based on the tempo -- placed them into the appropriate tempo bin.
Now, our mission was to look down at our playlist and play songs of varying tempo. We had markings like 1-5-8, or 2-6-10 to indicate the next three songs (fast, medium, slow) and breaks for each commercial or public service announcement.
The idea was that you were supposed to take a 45 from the front of the bin, play it, and then put it in the back of the bin. Of course, it didn't work like that, since our playlist was based on tempo and not song titles -- so all the shitty stuff was in the back of the bins never to be touched, and all the good stuff was in the front.
And we only had to hit our commercials plus or minus two minutes -- and give our top of the hour station announcements within 60 seconds plus or minus -- so we had a *lot* of leeway to play what we felt like, when we felt like it. It was fantastic, actually.
We broadcast out of a tiny white house that had been converted into a radio station. Transmitter in the living room, main booth in one bedroom, production studio in the other, and the sales office in the kitchen.
And we had a *huge* listener base. I used to do a lot of Friday and Saturday night shifts -- from 8pm to 2am -- and, man, I had groupies. I couldn't fucking believe it. People would hear your voice -- on account they'd be playing you at parties and in their car -- and they'd drop by in droves to see what you looked like. It was sick and bizarre, but it was loads of fun. We'd be sitting in the booth and staring out the window into the backyard and see all these people back there, waving and trying to get your attention.
It was really a bizarre thing but amazingly exciting. The fact that we were spinning 45s, playing more or less what we wanted (within reason) made for some amazing nights of music.
Sadly, KQ102 was put out of business by the rise of digital and the fact that they were one of the last stations in the area to still use vinyl. We actually had *turntables* -- as if we were a college radio station. It was a trip.
Great fun. Huge listener base. Gave away lots of prizes and cash.
But it was pretty much stomped out by corporate radio.
The interesting thing about this -- and what I haven't heard many people talking about is this: that until Lucas really delivers the quintessential Star Wars film -- hopefully in 2005 -- he's not doing any favors for the "film to digital" movement in Hollywood and around the world.
I say all this because Lucas insists that digital is the wave of the future -- digital "film" and digital "projection" -- and Lucas is clearly at the forefront of the movement. And that's fine. But until Lucas can deliver a single potent film -- shot digitally, edited digitally, and projected digitally -- he's actually hurting the "100% digital" movement.
I'm sure folks disagree -- and I'd be curious to hear counter-arguments -- but all this struck me when I was watching an interview with Lucas not long ago where he apparently wondered why Scorsese was building huge sets for his (Scorsese's) upcoming 'Gangs of New York' film in Rome. (Scorsese recreated turn of the century lower-Manhattan in, apparently, incredible detail -- right down to authentic leaded glass windows, glass bottles, you name it. Everything, interestingly enough, was created on Fellini's old studio outside of Rome.)
Lucas's point, as I understand it, was that Scorsese was wasting his time -- and Harvey Weinstein's money. Everything Scorsese was doing could be digitally created and the actors only had to show up in a studio lined with blue screens and simple foreground props. The background and atmosphere could be digitally created. Scorsese -- to his credit -- said no way, this is the way films have been done in the past, this is the way I want to make films.
Now, perhaps it's really Scorsese that's potentially on the losing end -- because he's *still* doing it the way it was always done. But I'm not so sure about that.
I understand what Lucas is saying -- and I understand what he means -- but with the exception, perhaps, of some truly original stuff in the Matrix (which, of course, had a fantastic story), I'm not convinced that 100% digital is convincing anyone yet. It'll make pretty pictures, sure, but good stories are still needed, too, and Lucas -- despite esentially an endless supply of cash -- hasn't done it. Didn't do it with Phantom Menance and (from what I hear) hasn't done it with Attack of the Clones.
Anyway, I don't mean this as a flame. I'm just curious what other folks think about this -- the idea that if Lucas is at the forefront of all this, he's really got to be the one that proves. Otherwise it'll get there eventually, sure, but not with the speed that Lucas (and other folks) hope.
Does this mean that Edward Said never publishes 'Orientalism?'
Maybe some other dude publishes 'Occidentalism?' So it's possible to blame the East for the same ills and misunderstanding that Said blames the West for?
I think the point may be that TIVO *does* collect user selection and programming data.
Now, my question is this: why are the studios forcing Replay to collect something that will -- I'm assuming -- be used later to incriminate ReplayTV?
These studios -- and Valenti and Rosen, in particular -- must think they're the King and Queen of America -- they can do anything, ask anything, require anything.
Something I've always wondered about in this debate: why doesn't the RIAA go after public libraries?
The idea of "lending" a book -- or a CD or a DVD -- seems to me to be the issue here. Last time I checked, my local library had thousands and thousands of books and CDs -- and lots of people coming in and out, renting for free, reading for free, borrowing, xeroxing, and all manner of free things.
Is the library the next intellectual property target?
(I don't know. I ask because I've always wondered about this.)
I thought you're talking about Harry Knowles. Of Aint-it-cool-News fame.
It doesn't matter if he thinks the movie sucks or not, he'll still rave about it, compare it to multiple orgasms, and then gush about how he needs presents because it's his birthday.
Is it just me or are Knowles' reviews truly bizarre?
I know he's a real cheerleader for film, and that's great. But after reading his review of Blade 2, I'm sure not sure what to think of Knowles.
I mean, I'm all for enthusiasm. That's fine. And I know he's somewhat of a celebrity -- he's got a new book out, appeared a couple times with Ebert on Ebert's show -- but his reviews are repulsive in a way that sorta defies any explanation.
But not all his reviews of repulsive. Blade 2 maybe is the oddball. And I'm not sure even why the Blade 2 review bothers me so much. After all, it's sorta the power of the everyman-reviewer-on-the-internet encapsulated.
But there's something sorta off-putting about Knowles. Like he's a bit *too* enthusiastic -- and oftentimes about the weirdest things.
More power to him, I guess. No one is forcing me to read the reviews, right?
I guess they're not really reviews. That's the part that gets me. Maybe I'm taking them too seriously. I just gotta chill, read it, and roll with it. But they sorta expose stuff that sorta makes you scratch your head (or, as Harry might say, your ass) and say, "Hmmmmmm...."
I derive great pleasure by watching (and hearing about) the foibles of geriatric Jack Valenti. He's been around forever -- since the days of JFK in various positions, IIRC -- and is probably the the thing that's standing between the MPAA and forward-thinking, progressive movement.
This is off-topic, but when I was 9 or 10 I desperately wanted to get into films like 'Apocalypse Now' and the 'Deer Hunter.' I didn't want to go accompanied with my parents (I did, eventually) and so took the opportunity to write Mr. Valenti and short (and not irate) letter about problems with the MPAA rating system. Now, say what you will about a 10 year old going to see 'Apocalypse Now' (and make cracks about it not being a good film anyway, blah blah blah) it was one of those formative experience films -- and I understood that even before seeing it.
Anyway, I had the letter proofed by various people (my dad taught English at a local college, so it was easy to get a bunch of opinions on whether or not the letter was 'too shrill' or 'too juvenile') and wrote a variety of drafts. The gist was this: that the MPAA rating system (before the days of PG-13) as it existed in 1979 was unfair: that it should be up to parents whether or not their children could go see a movie unaccompanied. My parents *wanted* to see 'Apocalypse Now' and 'The Deer Hunter' and 'Coming Home' and -- a few years before -- 'Saturday Night Fever' -- so it wasn't a matter of me not being able to go -- it was one of those 'on principle' things: who is this MPAA and why are they making rules for parents on what they can and can't do with their kids? (Kids can go to movies -- but only if their parents are there, too. To me, it was absurd. I mean, I was watching stuff like 'Wild Strawberries' and 'The Bicyle Thief' and 'Walkabout' (yeah, I know, it sounds pretentious -- blah blah blah -- but that's the sort of world I lived in -- lots of good films, good books, and I loved every minute of it) so it was absurd that some guy named Jack Valenti was telling me I couldn't see certain films by myself.
Anyway, I wrote the letter. Wrote many drafts. Finally nailed it. It was a page long. Not shrill. Thoughtful, but fim. I mailed it off to him. (A friend of a friend got his actual address.)
And I *never* heard back. Not a peep. Not a form letter. Nothing.
I thought: well, fuck him. I knew it was a dumb thing to do -- sending off a letter of complaint. And I knew even then that I was raging into the chasm. There was nothing down there except the sound of my own voice. I knew that.
But I at least expected a response. Some inkling that after all the trouble I went through he'd at least "took note" of my complaint and thanked me for writing and understood my frustration but, ya know, that's just the way it was.
What does this have to do with the topic at hand? Not much except for the Valenti link. The fact that it's still -- after all these years -- Jack Valenti telling us what we can and can't do. And why we're wrong doing what we're doing. It's Hilary Rosen, too, over at the RIAA -- I know that.
But somehow my little experience 15 years (I finally realized) is emblematic of the whole problem with corporate giants: that no one, in the end, gives a fuck. The corporations don't, at least. The politicians try, sure. But they're hamstrung by Valenti and Rosen and all the lawyers fighting the 'Bleak House'-like endless legal battle: battling for years and years. The point of the case is all but forgotten. But they're still suing, still collecting their fees.
That first lesson in cynicism still rankles me to this day. I wonder if he ever even read my little letter.
And realize that the people in charge of the politicians -- republicans and democrats -- are the apolitical corporations.
So, by all means, get out and vote. But when it comes to this issue, I'll be a cynic and say: it makes no difference who you vote for since the people really in charge are the corporations. And no one is gonna topple the corporate hegemony except for the corporations themselves. Enron is a good example: you have employees threatening to blow the whistle and then Enron big-wigs trying to assess what sort of options they have if they fire the whistleblowers. (Is it illegal? Can we legally fire the people writing the cautionary memos? If so, what sorts of liabilities do we face?)
The only reform seems to be indirect reform -- and perhaps Enron will actually help out with this -- and that is government re-defining the power structure of corporate giants. We see a little bit of it with Microsoft (the idea that some states are demanding the source code -- worthless, yes, but the fact that states are demanding the codes is more important than the source code itself).
The RIAA and MPAA (geriatric Jack Valenti at the healm) seem to possess an egregious amount of "unchecked", raw power. My prediction is that in a decade (or less) we'll start seeing articles about the RIAA blew it when they refused Napster's absurd offer of "one billion dollars". The week Napster made the offer -- and the moment when the RIAA said "No thanks" -- seems to be -- in general -- the week when all of this reached critical mass. The media had a field day with the "Napster is up" "Napster is shut down" stuff and that one billion dollar offer was the last gasp. The RIAA refused it and -- in retrospect -- not only stopped the cart in the middle of the road, but they killed the horse, too. And pretty much demolished the cart. And what's left is only the ruins of the cart and lots of mud tracks going *around* the cart. But the cart was what mattered. The stuff is the mud tracks is just a bunch of jerry-rigged carts and Huffy bikes that don't make a dent.
Say what you will about Napster (it was awful, it was unhip, it was all Britney and Justin, blah blah blah) but it ushered in -- and stopped dead -- the momentum for large-scale music possibilities. Post-Napster we see all these lame "play 200 times, but not burn" type of services, that no one -- at least no one with any sort of sense -- would subscribe to. In fact, I bet most of PressPlay's customers are journalists writing about how much PressPlay pales in comparison to Napster's glory days or how it's pointless now that Kazaa is the new music-video-software swapping ground.
Maybe even if Hilary Rosen took the one billion she would have still managed to much up Napster -- and we'd still have these same articles written about how the artists can't make a dime off Napster -- but it seems to me that there might be a bit more momentum for on-line music than there is now. But maybe not. Maybe the RIAA's greed would simply kill anything, anywhere, at any time.
The "film projectionist" might be removed -- but I would think that he or she would be replaced by a "digital network specialist" (or whatever you want to call it).
And I'd bet (I don't know -- I'm just guessing) that ad-hoc servicing of the digital projectors is *much* more complex and time-intensive than whatever projectors currently exists in theaters.
So my question, I guess, is this: you remove the projectionist, but in his or her place, wouldn't have to bring a *team* of network people? Or digital projection people? Or both? And would this actually save any money?
I understand the allure of digital, and I'm curious about it: I'd love to see a digital film in a theater someday. But I guess I'm very unsure about how any of this new technology would appeal to movie theater owners -- all of whom are already under the gun and barely able to survive.
Didn't Lucas pull some sort of massive blackmail with the Phantom Menace -- all film receipts (concession sales, too?) for the first six months of the film go exclusively to Lucas? I remember something like that -- and I remember it being unprecedented -- mostly because (a) it seemed that Lucas was being venomously greedy and (b) it was predicated on the premise that the Phantom Menace would -- over six months -- continue, week after week, to show to sell-out audiences.
On a somewhat unrelated note: I just finished a book of interviews with John Cassavetes, the 60's and 70's "maverick" filmmaker who -- more or less - started the "indie" movement single-handedly. When he finally released 'A Woman Under the Influence' (arguably his best film) in 1975, he was forced to distribute it *himself* -- literally. No studio would touch it. Cassavetes (having made films like 'Faces' and 'Husbands') was (according to the studios) box-office poison.
So Cassavetes -- single-handedly -- arranged for prints to be struck of his film, publicity posters to be made, and theaters to be booked -- all on his own dime.
And he -- with a small crew -- sent the reels to the theaters. Now, if you've seen 'A Woman Under the Influence' you know that it's a difficult film -- difficult (for some) to watch, difficult (for some) to understand.
Oddly enough, this worked. Cassavetes managed to drum up enough word of mouth to (finally) get 'Woman' seen by the public. The public didn't much like it, but that's another story.
Anyway, my point with this way off-topic digression is this: I wonder if Lucas -- 30 years after Cassavetes -- needs to pull a Cassavetes to get his film shown the way he wants it to be shown. I wonder if Lucas needs to foot much of the bill himself and say damn-the-torpedoes to the studio-naysayers. But is he willing to do this? Is it even possible?
An interesting aside to the Cassavetes story: Cassavetes and one of his friends had a small apartment across from Mann's Theater. They used sit out on the fire escape and watch the crowds come and go from showing of 'A Woman Under the Influence.' And occasionally Cassavetes would climb down, cross the street, and ask being coming out of the film for their opinions.
I can't see Lucas being this hands-on. Can you imagine it? You leave your sticky-floor theater and are on the way out past the concession stands and there's Lucas. "Say, did you like it? Did you like my film?"
BTW -- if anyone is interested -- the book on Cassavetes is called 'Cassavetes on Cassavetes' by Ray Carney. Excellent book.
I'm pretty surprised by the exuberant tone of the Salon article. Salon -- for the most part -- usually maintains at least a modicum of scepticism in their technology articles. But this article? Cripes.
It sounds like a Jon Katz essay!:)
Just kidding.
(Well, not really.)
I'm not sure how to take such exuberance. My first question after the reading the article was: is this guy on the Microsoft payroll?
And my second question was: just what, exactly, brought upon this sudden exuberance? A Microsoft PR push, perhaps? (I mean, the idea of web services -- while interesting -- still remains, I think, somewhat problematic -- at least in terms of security.)
The problem with these sorts of articles -- and I've seen similar articles about the e-book replacing the book, digital cameras replace film cameras -- is that the new technology (.NET, digital cameras, e-books) are always presented as if the choice is one or the other.
I'll grant that digital cameras -- especially the high end cameras -- are cool. But they don't do anything (yet) that film cameras can. (And, no, I'm not interested in a film versus digital debate -- I'm a darkroom guy -- always will be -- so I'll never concede that digital *replaces* film.)
Same with.NET technologies. It's not.NET or -- nothing. At least, I don't think it is. I think.NET will mesh with current technologies and we'll see hybridity for a long time to come. Same with film, same with books.
I'm curious, though, why people think it *has* to be an exclusive thing when it comes to new technologies. Digital cameras *must* defeat film cameras. Ergo film is dead.
E-books *must* replace regular books. Ergo, I'm a pretentious jerk who thinks that the books will stay around. (And does it never dawn on anyone -- at least with the e-book versus book debate -- that there actually exists some people -- myself among them -- who *like* books because they're books? I mean, yeah, it sounds weird: but I like book-as-object. Not to be pretentious with. But just to hold, touch, smell. It's one of those subtle little joys I derive from life: a physical book. The actual thing. Nothing digital about it.)
Ditto with film: yeah digital stuff is interesting. But it's not yet gone anywhere that film cameras and darkroom work hasn't already gone. And no, instant picture previews on LCD viewscreens do not count. There are those of us who actually *like* the pace of a wet darkroom, like the tactile feel of printmaking and wet chemicals and attention to detail that wet darkroom work requires. But this is way, way off-topic...)
But this is just a viewpoint that I've been noticing lately: it's *got* to be the new stuff because we must kill off the "old" stuff. We must prove that film is indeed dead.
That books are indeed dead.
That anything non-.NET related is instantly "legacy" technology and therefore useless.
Is there no middle ground? No possibility of a hybrid? (Digital cameras for some studio work, sure, but -- cripes -- can anyone really beat a beautifully shot 4 X 5 negative carefully developed and printed? When it's done right, it's exquisite.)
And -- my last point -- the people hankering for the new technology are often quite venomous when it comes to trying to reconcile the old with the new. Those of us still in love with the old stuff, yeah, maybe we're behind the times, and old-farts, and pathetic people who can't appreciate the new stuff coming down the pike -- but geez. Somtimes it's nice to take a break from the "latest and greatest" and go back to the "old stuff"
LOL. I know exactly what would happen if Harry Potter would be released as an e-book: it would shrivel and die.
It would not be considered the legitimate sequel.
It would be the dreaded asterisk, as in: "Harry Potter has spawned 5* sequels" Then: "* Including one 'electronic' version of Potter's adventures."
There is nothing compelling about e-books. Nothing. As someone who has 1500+ books in my house -- everything from Faulker to Stephen Levy -- I can categorically state that the e-book is now, and forever will remain, a bastard child.
There's a reason "books" have survived for over 500 years. They're almost perfect: portable, lightweight, cheap. Easy to buy, easy to trade, easy to sell.
Indie bookstores will not shrivel up and die if Harry Potter 5 is released electronically. They'll just keep selling what they're selling, keep doing what they're doing.
Much as some folks would like to think it, Harry Potter is not the be-all and end-all of literature. The article seems to forget that books have a 500 year history. Rowling is today's top-selling author (or whatever she's considered) but she's not *tomorrow's top-selling author.* There will be plenty more J.K. Rowling's over the next decade or so.
And I think that's fine. More power to 'em.
BTW, can anyone actually imagine reading Proust as an e-book? I mean, maybe it's just me, but I find e-books incredibly difficult to read for sustained periods of time. It's not unusual for me to spend 8, 10, sometimes 12 hours reading a book cover-to-cover. It's hard enough to do with a "real" book (I can't believe I'm writing that -- a "real" book -- LOL) but can you do that with an e-book? Do you even *want* to that with an e-book? And imagine forcing yourself to read an large, long e-book for a class -- by an author you don't care for but that you're forced to read.
Faulkner as an e-book? Can you imagine it?
Hemingway, maybe. But Faulkner? Melville? It would drive one batty.
Anyway, this article is nonsense. No, that's not me spouting flame-bait, it's me just giving an opinion.
J.K. Rowling may be popular, but -- please -- she's in no position to "kill" the book. Or drive booksellers out of business.
What no one mentions much about 'Catcher in the Rye' is that it's actually a pretty strange little book.
It usually gets lumped together with serial killers and presidential assassins. That might be because not only is a good little book, but it's also a fairly short book. When you're busy destroying lives and gunning down politicians, I guess you don't have much time to sit down in your favorite reading chair and dive into Proust. So you look for short books. 'Catcher in the Rye' usually fits the bill.
Of course, these killers might also like other short books like 'Animal Farm' and '1984'. (And why do serial killers only like books on the boring old junior high reading list?)
Anyway, a couple weeks ago, I sat down in my favorite reading chair and -- for the first time in about 20 years -- re-read 'Catcher in the Rye.'
It's a disturbing book, no doubt. But it's disturbing because it's quite good and Salinger -- in this and his short stories -- is really an incredible stylist. But I wondered -- still sitting my favorite reading chair -- *why* everybody makes such a big deal about the book. Holden is messed up -- and paranoid or schizophrenic or maybe A.D.D. -- but why is this little book such a touchstone for the sickos in American society? I mean, is it because they -- in the best high-school book report sense of the term -- "identify with the main character?"
"Hey, I like it because Holden is me! I'm Holden! That's me!"
Anyway, I was thrown by how much I couldn't put my finger on the book. I'm someone who *does* sit down and read Proust and Melville and Faulkner and Pynchon and DeLillo and Cormac McCarthy (best American writer writing today, BTW) so I didn't expect to like 'Catcher'. But there's something really pretty unsettling in the way Salinger tells his story.
I *still* don't know why it is so identified with American wonkiness. Or wonkiness in the American psyche. Maybe we'll raid the latest den of religious extremists and, in order to get a better fix on the American psyche, we'll discover that they, too, have gravitated to Salinger's book and his short stories (which, IMHO, are even stranger than the book.)
But how come none of the wackos ever read Samuel Beckett? If there's anything that seems to model contemporary American isolationism it's Beckett. Sluggishness, lethargy, malaise. Isn't this what's wrong with American culture? We're mired in our own glorious narcissism? LOL.
Anyway, yes mods, yes, yes, yes -- this is off-topic. So, yes, call this off-topic and have a field-day modding me down. This post is an easy-target.
And if you were actually born in the late 60's and actually lived through the 80's, you probably remember:
- That Sears (!) sold their own version of the Atari 2600. I remember hanging out with my buddies in the Sears hardware department, playing the 2600 for hours on end on Saturday afternoons.
- That the malls (having become quite popular) were the best places for playing the 2600 or Intellivisions when you didn't actually have one of your own. I remember walking down to Carsons (or Bergners as it was known in the small, Illinois town where I grew up) from Sears and playing Intellivision when we were sick of the Atari.
- And when we were sick of the Atari and Intellivision, we'd head on down to the Aladdin's Castle arcade, where we'd line the Donkey Kong and Pac Man machines with our tokens and pretty stay there into the evening drinking Orange Julius' and playing pattern after pattern of Pac-Man. (We'd of course memorized all the patterns for all the screens.)
- And when we'd tire of Pac-Man and Donkey, we'd play Tron and Wizard of Wor. I don't know why, but I think of all games from that time, Tron was my favorite. We become so enamored of the light-cycles in tron that we'd go home and code up (in Z80 assembly language, no less) our own version of the light cycle game on the TRS-80's we had.
- And yeah: that was the other cool thing at the mall in our town: Radio Shack. With the TRS-80 Model II (using the 8 inch floppies) and the TRS-80 Model III (with 48K ram!) we'd use the little acoustic modem to call to couple cool BBS systems.
Looking back, I can't believe how much (a) money I spent in arcades in the early 80's and (b) how much time my buddies and I spent at the local mall, going from the Ataris to the Intellvisions to the Aladdin's Castle and then back again. Unbelievable!
And the Sears in our mall, actually had an mini-arcade in the back of the store. Had about 10 stand up games like Scramble and Sinistar and Berzerk -- sort of grade-B games, I guess, but I thought they all kicked ass. We'd shove slugs up the coin return on the machines and give ourselves endless credits. LOL.
Damn, whatever happened to Orange Julius? There was nothing better then a big Orange Julius and one of their yummy-licious hot-dogs! (And the pretzels covered in chocolate.)
It's Christmas, so I decide to buy myself a Christmas gift -- since I buy the best gifts for myself. They usually involve a lot of money and computer equipment.
Okay, so this Christmas -- couple months ago -- I take the plunge and buy a miniDV camera. I also realize I need editing software. So I get Vegas Video. And what the heck: sound on DV cameras sucks, so I buy myself a couple microphones (a stereo mic, a shotgun mic, and -- because I can -- an XLR mic with a little XLR box that sits between my miniDV cam and the mic.)
Okay, so I've got my whole setup ready to go. I decide I'm gonna shoot some documentaries of my friends, my family, and my dog, Brewster. I spend a couple weeks shooting funny shit -- little movies, a couple of documentaries, and a 15 minute long video of family photographs set to Benny Goodman music. Sorta like what Woody Allen does at the beginning of his movies.
Anyway, the photographs were family photos -- old ones, black and white and color, and the finished video -- complete with zooms into and pans across the old photographs -- was very cool. Like Ken Burns. That sort of thing.
I get the bright idea: hey, I oughta *show* this to someone. So I do. I mail the video to my parents. Now, okay, it's pretty small -- around 5 megs or so -- but I forget my parents are still on a modem. So I get this angry call from my dad: "What the hell did you send us! The modem's been nonstop for an hour!"
A photograph video, I told him.
"Cripes, I couldn't figure out what it was! I thought it was a virus! I had to restart it five times before I finally gave up."
It dawned on me that, heck, I coulda just put the video on a web page. But I didn't think of that. I just took the edited video and emailed it off to the folks.
Okay, so three days later. I get another call. It's the old man: "Hey we finally downloaded the video! Fantastic! I mailed it off to your aunt!"
Um, I said. I could just put a web page up and she could download the video.
"Too late!" says the old man. "Make more! We love those videos!"
Couple more days pass, and I get this angry call from my aunt: "What the hell is the video you've been sending around? It took me hours to download it! I had to call my ISP! They thought it was a virus."
I pointed out that I didn't send it. I made it, but I didn't send it. "Blame your brother," I told my aunt.
"Cripes!" she says. "Don't ever send me another video. You don't know the headaches I went through to download that thing."
Did you watch it?
"Watch it? I had my ISP zap it off my email account. I was getting account errors, quota errors, you name it!"
But it didn't end there. My dad kept sending this five meg video around. More calls ensued. Angry emails came in from my cousins, uncles, aunts. The gist: don't ever send us a video again.
I'm thinking: cripes, my family is cracked. It's just a five meg video, for chrissake!
But who knows.
Anyway, moral of the story. Normal people do not send videos. Morons (like me) start the ball rolling and actually email videos. But, no, no one sends videos. It's just marketing bullshit.
There's still ill-will about the videos. I didn't think it was a big deal. And I apologized all around. But the damage has been done.
Question: What's the advantage to this MP3 recorder over a minidisc recorder?
I know both recorders use types of compression, but wouldn't your standard MD player offer better overall quality?
(DAT would obviously be better, but I'm trying to figure out why anyone would use this thing over an MD recorder and a decent mic.)
This isn't meant to be a flame or a troll -- I'm curious. I realize MD is limited to the amount of time on an MD tape, but I've used MD to record a lot of Dylan concerts, and always -- almost always, at least -- the sound is superb. The few times the sound hasn't been superb has been my own fault -- cheap mic, bad seating, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Ha!
I think you're right. The idea that when we see a new Star Wars film we remember how we can never be ten again.
I didn't think of that. Thanks for your post!
Why has Star Wars become uncool with the Slashdot crowd?
My take is this: that there are those of us born before the first Star Wars and who mark one of our "cinematic moments" with the memory of going to see Star Wars in 1977. I mean, I certainly have vivid memories of the day I saw the firt Star Wars. I was ten at the time, and it was one of those "important cinematic milestones" for me. (The others were seeing 'Saturday Night Fever', 'Apocalypse Now', and 'Deer Hunter.')
I've heard Kevin Smith mention the same films, in fact (but not the Deer Hunter) as being the films that sorta changed his life.
And there is the post-Star Wars crowd. Those who found themselves to be born after Star Wars -- or after (ugh!) even 'Return of the Jedi'.
I suspect -- although I have no idea -- that the crowd born before Star Wars thinks that this latest round of Star Wars films -- Eps. 1 and 2 -- to be pretty tame, tepid films. Uncool, and very unhip.
The 70's were a great decade for film and 'Star Wars' -- strangely enough -- was sorta the 'capper'. At least I think so. Apocalypse Now and Five Easy Pieces and the King of Marvin Gardens (my other 70's faves) are in there, too -- but Star Wars seemed to come out of nowhere. Even at 10 years old, I realized it was a pretty odd, strange, but wonderful film. And later -- in 1979 -- I felt the same way about Apocalypse Now. Seeing *that* for the first time, blew my mind.
Anyway, I don't mean to start a flame war. Just some observations.
I saw Ep. 2 yesterday was really bored. Lucas has turned the series into some stereotype of itself. Too much eye-candy, badly acted, and devoid of the "fun" that made the first Star Wars so interesting (and good).
This is off-topic (more or less), but I felt an urge to contribute my own personal experience in the pre-digital radio industry:
I used to work for an FM station, too -- KQ102 in Canton, Missouri -- and it was pretty interesting. It was from 1988-1989 -- and seemed to be the time right before "digital" took over everything FM.
Everything we played was on 45s -- vinyl -- and each 45 was rated according to its "tempo."
There were thousands of 45s at the station and about ten different tempo numbers. A #1 song was really, really fast -- and a number 10 was really, really slow.
Someone listened to all the music and -- based on the tempo -- placed them into the appropriate tempo bin.
Now, our mission was to look down at our playlist and play songs of varying tempo. We had markings like 1-5-8, or 2-6-10 to indicate the next three songs (fast, medium, slow) and breaks for each commercial or public service announcement.
The idea was that you were supposed to take a 45 from the front of the bin, play it, and then put it in the back of the bin. Of course, it didn't work like that, since our playlist was based on tempo and not song titles -- so all the shitty stuff was in the back of the bins never to be touched, and all the good stuff was in the front.
And we only had to hit our commercials plus or minus two minutes -- and give our top of the hour station announcements within 60 seconds plus or minus -- so we had a *lot* of leeway to play what we felt like, when we felt like it. It was fantastic, actually.
We broadcast out of a tiny white house that had been converted into a radio station. Transmitter in the living room, main booth in one bedroom, production studio in the other, and the sales office in the kitchen.
And we had a *huge* listener base. I used to do a lot of Friday and Saturday night shifts -- from 8pm to 2am -- and, man, I had groupies. I couldn't fucking believe it. People would hear your voice -- on account they'd be playing you at parties and in their car -- and they'd drop by in droves to see what you looked like. It was sick and bizarre, but it was loads of fun. We'd be sitting in the booth and staring out the window into the backyard and see all these people back there, waving and trying to get your attention.
It was really a bizarre thing but amazingly exciting. The fact that we were spinning 45s, playing more or less what we wanted (within reason) made for some amazing nights of music.
Sadly, KQ102 was put out of business by the rise of digital and the fact that they were one of the last stations in the area to still use vinyl. We actually had *turntables* -- as if we were a college radio station. It was a trip.
Great fun. Huge listener base. Gave away lots of prizes and cash.
But it was pretty much stomped out by corporate radio.
The interesting thing about this -- and what I haven't heard many people talking about is this: that until Lucas really delivers the quintessential Star Wars film -- hopefully in 2005 -- he's not doing any favors for the "film to digital" movement in Hollywood and around the world.
I say all this because Lucas insists that digital is the wave of the future -- digital "film" and digital "projection" -- and Lucas is clearly at the forefront of the movement. And that's fine. But until Lucas can deliver a single potent film -- shot digitally, edited digitally, and projected digitally -- he's actually hurting the "100% digital" movement.
I'm sure folks disagree -- and I'd be curious to hear counter-arguments -- but all this struck me when I was watching an interview with Lucas not long ago where he apparently wondered why Scorsese was building huge sets for his (Scorsese's) upcoming 'Gangs of New York' film in Rome. (Scorsese recreated turn of the century lower-Manhattan in, apparently, incredible detail -- right down to authentic leaded glass windows, glass bottles, you name it. Everything, interestingly enough, was created on Fellini's old studio outside of Rome.)
Lucas's point, as I understand it, was that Scorsese was wasting his time -- and Harvey Weinstein's money. Everything Scorsese was doing could be digitally created and the actors only had to show up in a studio lined with blue screens and simple foreground props. The background and atmosphere could be digitally created. Scorsese -- to his credit -- said no way, this is the way films have been done in the past, this is the way I want to make films.
Now, perhaps it's really Scorsese that's potentially on the losing end -- because he's *still* doing it the way it was always done. But I'm not so sure about that.
I understand what Lucas is saying -- and I understand what he means -- but with the exception, perhaps, of some truly original stuff in the Matrix (which, of course, had a fantastic story), I'm not convinced that 100% digital is convincing anyone yet. It'll make pretty pictures, sure, but good stories are still needed, too, and Lucas -- despite esentially an endless supply of cash -- hasn't done it. Didn't do it with Phantom Menance and (from what I hear) hasn't done it with Attack of the Clones.
Anyway, I don't mean this as a flame. I'm just curious what other folks think about this -- the idea that if Lucas is at the forefront of all this, he's really got to be the one that proves. Otherwise it'll get there eventually, sure, but not with the speed that Lucas (and other folks) hope.
Does this mean that Edward Said never publishes 'Orientalism?'
...
Maybe some other dude publishes 'Occidentalism?' So it's possible to blame the East for the same ills and misunderstanding that Said blames the West for?
More things change, more they stay the same
Tons and tons of e-texts. In multiple formats: text, pdf, lit, HTML.
Excellent resource!
I think the point may be that TIVO *does* collect user selection and programming data.
Now, my question is this: why are the studios forcing Replay to collect something that will -- I'm assuming -- be used later to incriminate ReplayTV?
These studios -- and Valenti and Rosen, in particular -- must think they're the King and Queen of America -- they can do anything, ask anything, require anything.
Something I've always wondered about in this debate: why doesn't the RIAA go after public libraries?
The idea of "lending" a book -- or a CD or a DVD -- seems to me to be the issue here. Last time I checked, my local library had thousands and thousands of books and CDs -- and lots of people coming in and out, renting for free, reading for free, borrowing, xeroxing, and all manner of free things.
Is the library the next intellectual property target?
(I don't know. I ask because I've always wondered about this.)
Leaders who wear sunglasses.
Guys who sit in big chairs.
Vats.
I thought you're talking about Harry Knowles. Of Aint-it-cool-News fame.
It doesn't matter if he thinks the movie sucks or not, he'll still rave about it, compare it to multiple orgasms, and then gush about how he needs presents because it's his birthday.
"Me want presents! Me want presents!"
It's nice that critics are so nice these days.
Yeah, I'd hate to be a random person somewhere in America.
Implying that, what, lasers don't have serial numbers?
That we'll reach a point in the future when we don't need serial numbers?
That there's even *greater* gun control in the future and that serial number *do* in fact pose a risk -- even if you're a good guy in a white hat?
Is it just me or are Knowles' reviews truly bizarre?
I know he's a real cheerleader for film, and that's great. But after reading his review of Blade 2, I'm sure not sure what to think of Knowles.
I mean, I'm all for enthusiasm. That's fine. And I know he's somewhat of a celebrity -- he's got a new book out, appeared a couple times with Ebert on Ebert's show -- but his reviews are repulsive in a way that sorta defies any explanation.
But not all his reviews of repulsive. Blade 2 maybe is the oddball. And I'm not sure even why the Blade 2 review bothers me so much. After all, it's sorta the power of the everyman-reviewer-on-the-internet encapsulated.
But there's something sorta off-putting about Knowles. Like he's a bit *too* enthusiastic -- and oftentimes about the weirdest things.
More power to him, I guess. No one is forcing me to read the reviews, right?
I guess they're not really reviews. That's the part that gets me. Maybe I'm taking them too seriously. I just gotta chill, read it, and roll with it. But they sorta expose stuff that sorta makes you scratch your head (or, as Harry might say, your ass) and say, "Hmmmmmm...."
*shrug*
Better yet, the record companies shouldn't release anything they don't want copied.
"Trust us, we have a lot of good music. You're not gonna hear it, but it's there. Trust us."
Students named their own price, and when the book sold, we deducted $5 as a "brokerage fee" and pocketed the rest.
This sounds like Jack Valenti/Hilary Rosen accounting.
No wonder the artists don't get paid.
I derive great pleasure by watching (and hearing about) the foibles of geriatric Jack Valenti. He's been around forever -- since the days of JFK in various positions, IIRC -- and is probably the the thing that's standing between the MPAA and forward-thinking, progressive movement.
This is off-topic, but when I was 9 or 10 I desperately wanted to get into films like 'Apocalypse Now' and the 'Deer Hunter.' I didn't want to go accompanied with my parents (I did, eventually) and so took the opportunity to write Mr. Valenti and short (and not irate) letter about problems with the MPAA rating system. Now, say what you will about a 10 year old going to see 'Apocalypse Now' (and make cracks about it not being a good film anyway, blah blah blah) it was one of those formative experience films -- and I understood that even before seeing it.
Anyway, I had the letter proofed by various people (my dad taught English at a local college, so it was easy to get a bunch of opinions on whether or not the letter was 'too shrill' or 'too juvenile') and wrote a variety of drafts. The gist was this: that the MPAA rating system (before the days of PG-13) as it existed in 1979 was unfair: that it should be up to parents whether or not their children could go see a movie unaccompanied. My parents *wanted* to see 'Apocalypse Now' and 'The Deer Hunter' and 'Coming Home' and -- a few years before -- 'Saturday Night Fever' -- so it wasn't a matter of me not being able to go -- it was one of those 'on principle' things: who is this MPAA and why are they making rules for parents on what they can and can't do with their kids? (Kids can go to movies -- but only if their parents are there, too. To me, it was absurd. I mean, I was watching stuff like 'Wild Strawberries' and 'The Bicyle Thief' and 'Walkabout' (yeah, I know, it sounds pretentious -- blah blah blah -- but that's the sort of world I lived in -- lots of good films, good books, and I loved every minute of it) so it was absurd that some guy named Jack Valenti was telling me I couldn't see certain films by myself.
Anyway, I wrote the letter. Wrote many drafts. Finally nailed it. It was a page long. Not shrill. Thoughtful, but fim. I mailed it off to him. (A friend of a friend got his actual address.)
And I *never* heard back. Not a peep. Not a form letter. Nothing.
I thought: well, fuck him. I knew it was a dumb thing to do -- sending off a letter of complaint. And I knew even then that I was raging into the chasm. There was nothing down there except the sound of my own voice. I knew that.
But I at least expected a response. Some inkling that after all the trouble I went through he'd at least "took note" of my complaint and thanked me for writing and understood my frustration but, ya know, that's just the way it was.
What does this have to do with the topic at hand? Not much except for the Valenti link. The fact that it's still -- after all these years -- Jack Valenti telling us what we can and can't do. And why we're wrong doing what we're doing. It's Hilary Rosen, too, over at the RIAA -- I know that.
But somehow my little experience 15 years (I finally realized) is emblematic of the whole problem with corporate giants: that no one, in the end, gives a fuck. The corporations don't, at least. The politicians try, sure. But they're hamstrung by Valenti and Rosen and all the lawyers fighting the 'Bleak House'-like endless legal battle: battling for years and years. The point of the case is all but forgotten. But they're still suing, still collecting their fees.
That first lesson in cynicism still rankles me to this day. I wonder if he ever even read my little letter.
Why does everyone assume it's a loop?
And realize that the people in charge of the politicians -- republicans and democrats -- are the apolitical corporations.
So, by all means, get out and vote. But when it comes to this issue, I'll be a cynic and say: it makes no difference who you vote for since the people really in charge are the corporations. And no one is gonna topple the corporate hegemony except for the corporations themselves. Enron is a good example: you have employees threatening to blow the whistle and then Enron big-wigs trying to assess what sort of options they have if they fire the whistleblowers. (Is it illegal? Can we legally fire the people writing the cautionary memos? If so, what sorts of liabilities do we face?)
The only reform seems to be indirect reform -- and perhaps Enron will actually help out with this -- and that is government re-defining the power structure of corporate giants. We see a little bit of it with Microsoft (the idea that some states are demanding the source code -- worthless, yes, but the fact that states are demanding the codes is more important than the source code itself).
The RIAA and MPAA (geriatric Jack Valenti at the healm) seem to possess an egregious amount of "unchecked", raw power. My prediction is that in a decade (or less) we'll start seeing articles about the RIAA blew it when they refused Napster's absurd offer of "one billion dollars". The week Napster made the offer -- and the moment when the RIAA said "No thanks" -- seems to be -- in general -- the week when all of this reached critical mass. The media had a field day with the "Napster is up" "Napster is shut down" stuff and that one billion dollar offer was the last gasp. The RIAA refused it and -- in retrospect -- not only stopped the cart in the middle of the road, but they killed the horse, too. And pretty much demolished the cart. And what's left is only the ruins of the cart and lots of mud tracks going *around* the cart. But the cart was what mattered. The stuff is the mud tracks is just a bunch of jerry-rigged carts and Huffy bikes that don't make a dent.
Say what you will about Napster (it was awful, it was unhip, it was all Britney and Justin, blah blah blah) but it ushered in -- and stopped dead -- the momentum for large-scale music possibilities. Post-Napster we see all these lame "play 200 times, but not burn" type of services, that no one -- at least no one with any sort of sense -- would subscribe to. In fact, I bet most of PressPlay's customers are journalists writing about how much PressPlay pales in comparison to Napster's glory days or how it's pointless now that Kazaa is the new music-video-software swapping ground.
Maybe even if Hilary Rosen took the one billion she would have still managed to much up Napster -- and we'd still have these same articles written about how the artists can't make a dime off Napster -- but it seems to me that there might be a bit more momentum for on-line music than there is now. But maybe not. Maybe the RIAA's greed would simply kill anything, anywhere, at any time.
The "film projectionist" might be removed -- but I would think that he or she would be replaced by a "digital network specialist" (or whatever you want to call it).
And I'd bet (I don't know -- I'm just guessing) that ad-hoc servicing of the digital projectors is *much* more complex and time-intensive than whatever projectors currently exists in theaters.
So my question, I guess, is this: you remove the projectionist, but in his or her place, wouldn't have to bring a *team* of network people? Or digital projection people? Or both? And would this actually save any money?
I understand the allure of digital, and I'm curious about it: I'd love to see a digital film in a theater someday. But I guess I'm very unsure about how any of this new technology would appeal to movie theater owners -- all of whom are already under the gun and barely able to survive.
Didn't Lucas pull some sort of massive blackmail with the Phantom Menace -- all film receipts (concession sales, too?) for the first six months of the film go exclusively to Lucas? I remember something like that -- and I remember it being unprecedented -- mostly because (a) it seemed that Lucas was being venomously greedy and (b) it was predicated on the premise that the Phantom Menace would -- over six months -- continue, week after week, to show to sell-out audiences.
On a somewhat unrelated note: I just finished a book of interviews with John Cassavetes, the 60's and 70's "maverick" filmmaker who -- more or less - started the "indie" movement single-handedly. When he finally released 'A Woman Under the Influence' (arguably his best film) in 1975, he was forced to distribute it *himself* -- literally. No studio would touch it. Cassavetes (having made films like 'Faces' and 'Husbands') was (according to the studios) box-office poison.
So Cassavetes -- single-handedly -- arranged for prints to be struck of his film, publicity posters to be made, and theaters to be booked -- all on his own dime.
And he -- with a small crew -- sent the reels to the theaters. Now, if you've seen 'A Woman Under the Influence' you know that it's a difficult film -- difficult (for some) to watch, difficult (for some) to understand.
Oddly enough, this worked. Cassavetes managed to drum up enough word of mouth to (finally) get 'Woman' seen by the public. The public didn't much like it, but that's another story.
Anyway, my point with this way off-topic digression is this: I wonder if Lucas -- 30 years after Cassavetes -- needs to pull a Cassavetes to get his film shown the way he wants it to be shown. I wonder if Lucas needs to foot much of the bill himself and say damn-the-torpedoes to the studio-naysayers. But is he willing to do this? Is it even possible?
An interesting aside to the Cassavetes story: Cassavetes and one of his friends had a small apartment across from Mann's Theater. They used sit out on the fire escape and watch the crowds come and go from showing of 'A Woman Under the Influence.' And occasionally Cassavetes would climb down, cross the street, and ask being coming out of the film for their opinions.
I can't see Lucas being this hands-on. Can you imagine it? You leave your sticky-floor theater and are on the way out past the concession stands and there's Lucas. "Say, did you like it? Did you like my film?"
BTW -- if anyone is interested -- the book on Cassavetes is called 'Cassavetes on Cassavetes' by Ray Carney. Excellent book.
I'm pretty surprised by the exuberant tone of the Salon article. Salon -- for the most part -- usually maintains at least a modicum of scepticism in their technology articles. But this article? Cripes.
:)
.NET technologies. It's not .NET or -- nothing. At least, I don't think it is. I think .NET will mesh with current technologies and we'll see hybridity for a long time to come. Same with film, same with books.
It sounds like a Jon Katz essay!
Just kidding.
(Well, not really.)
I'm not sure how to take such exuberance. My first question after the reading the article was: is this guy on the Microsoft payroll?
And my second question was: just what, exactly, brought upon this sudden exuberance? A Microsoft PR push, perhaps? (I mean, the idea of web services -- while interesting -- still remains, I think, somewhat problematic -- at least in terms of security.)
The problem with these sorts of articles -- and I've seen similar articles about the e-book replacing the book, digital cameras replace film cameras -- is that the new technology (.NET, digital cameras, e-books) are always presented as if the choice is one or the other.
I'll grant that digital cameras -- especially the high end cameras -- are cool. But they don't do anything (yet) that film cameras can. (And, no, I'm not interested in a film versus digital debate -- I'm a darkroom guy -- always will be -- so I'll never concede that digital *replaces* film.)
Same with
I'm curious, though, why people think it *has* to be an exclusive thing when it comes to new technologies. Digital cameras *must* defeat film cameras. Ergo film is dead.
E-books *must* replace regular books. Ergo, I'm a pretentious jerk who thinks that the books will stay around. (And does it never dawn on anyone -- at least with the e-book versus book debate -- that there actually exists some people -- myself among them -- who *like* books because they're books? I mean, yeah, it sounds weird: but I like book-as-object. Not to be pretentious with. But just to hold, touch, smell. It's one of those subtle little joys I derive from life: a physical book. The actual thing. Nothing digital about it.)
Ditto with film: yeah digital stuff is interesting. But it's not yet gone anywhere that film cameras and darkroom work hasn't already gone. And no, instant picture previews on LCD viewscreens do not count. There are those of us who actually *like* the pace of a wet darkroom, like the tactile feel of printmaking and wet chemicals and attention to detail that wet darkroom work requires. But this is way, way off-topic...)
But this is just a viewpoint that I've been noticing lately: it's *got* to be the new stuff because we must kill off the "old" stuff. We must prove that film is indeed dead.
That books are indeed dead.
That anything non-.NET related is instantly "legacy" technology and therefore useless.
Is there no middle ground? No possibility of a hybrid? (Digital cameras for some studio work, sure, but -- cripes -- can anyone really beat a beautifully shot 4 X 5 negative carefully developed and printed? When it's done right, it's exquisite.)
And -- my last point -- the people hankering for the new technology are often quite venomous when it comes to trying to reconcile the old with the new. Those of us still in love with the old stuff, yeah, maybe we're behind the times, and old-farts, and pathetic people who can't appreciate the new stuff coming down the pike -- but geez. Somtimes it's nice to take a break from the "latest and greatest" and go back to the "old stuff"
Somtimes it just clears the head a bit.
LOL. I know exactly what would happen if Harry Potter would be released as an e-book: it would shrivel and die.
It would not be considered the legitimate sequel.
It would be the dreaded asterisk, as in: "Harry Potter has spawned 5* sequels" Then: "* Including one 'electronic' version of Potter's adventures."
There is nothing compelling about e-books. Nothing. As someone who has 1500+ books in my house -- everything from Faulker to Stephen Levy -- I can categorically state that the e-book is now, and forever will remain, a bastard child.
There's a reason "books" have survived for over 500 years. They're almost perfect: portable, lightweight, cheap. Easy to buy, easy to trade, easy to sell.
Indie bookstores will not shrivel up and die if Harry Potter 5 is released electronically. They'll just keep selling what they're selling, keep doing what they're doing.
Much as some folks would like to think it, Harry Potter is not the be-all and end-all of literature. The article seems to forget that books have a 500 year history. Rowling is today's top-selling author (or whatever she's considered) but she's not *tomorrow's top-selling author.* There will be plenty more J.K. Rowling's over the next decade or so.
And I think that's fine. More power to 'em.
BTW, can anyone actually imagine reading Proust as an e-book? I mean, maybe it's just me, but I find e-books incredibly difficult to read for sustained periods of time. It's not unusual for me to spend 8, 10, sometimes 12 hours reading a book cover-to-cover. It's hard enough to do with a "real" book (I can't believe I'm writing that -- a "real" book -- LOL) but can you do that with an e-book? Do you even *want* to that with an e-book? And imagine forcing yourself to read an large, long e-book for a class -- by an author you don't care for but that you're forced to read.
Faulkner as an e-book? Can you imagine it?
Hemingway, maybe. But Faulkner? Melville? It would drive one batty.
Anyway, this article is nonsense. No, that's not me spouting flame-bait, it's me just giving an opinion.
J.K. Rowling may be popular, but -- please -- she's in no position to "kill" the book. Or drive booksellers out of business.
ROTLMAO.
What no one mentions much about 'Catcher in the Rye' is that it's actually a pretty strange little book.
It usually gets lumped together with serial killers and presidential assassins. That might be because not only is a good little book, but it's also a fairly short book. When you're busy destroying lives and gunning down politicians, I guess you don't have much time to sit down in your favorite reading chair and dive into Proust. So you look for short books. 'Catcher in the Rye' usually fits the bill.
Of course, these killers might also like other short books like 'Animal Farm' and '1984'. (And why do serial killers only like books on the boring old junior high reading list?)
Anyway, a couple weeks ago, I sat down in my favorite reading chair and -- for the first time in about 20 years -- re-read 'Catcher in the Rye.'
It's a disturbing book, no doubt. But it's disturbing because it's quite good and Salinger -- in this and his short stories -- is really an incredible stylist. But I wondered -- still sitting my favorite reading chair -- *why* everybody makes such a big deal about the book. Holden is messed up -- and paranoid or schizophrenic or maybe A.D.D. -- but why is this little book such a touchstone for the sickos in American society? I mean, is it because they -- in the best high-school book report sense of the term -- "identify with the main character?"
"Hey, I like it because Holden is me! I'm Holden! That's me!"
Anyway, I was thrown by how much I couldn't put my finger on the book. I'm someone who *does* sit down and read Proust and Melville and Faulkner and Pynchon and DeLillo and Cormac McCarthy (best American writer writing today, BTW) so I didn't expect to like 'Catcher'. But there's something really pretty unsettling in the way Salinger tells his story.
I *still* don't know why it is so identified with American wonkiness. Or wonkiness in the American psyche. Maybe we'll raid the latest den of religious extremists and, in order to get a better fix on the American psyche, we'll discover that they, too, have gravitated to Salinger's book and his short stories (which, IMHO, are even stranger than the book.)
But how come none of the wackos ever read Samuel Beckett? If there's anything that seems to model contemporary American isolationism it's Beckett. Sluggishness, lethargy, malaise. Isn't this what's wrong with American culture? We're mired in our own glorious narcissism? LOL.
Anyway, yes mods, yes, yes, yes -- this is off-topic. So, yes, call this off-topic and have a field-day modding me down. This post is an easy-target.
And if you were actually born in the late 60's and actually lived through the 80's, you probably remember:
- That Sears (!) sold their own version of the Atari 2600. I remember hanging out with my buddies in the Sears hardware department, playing the 2600 for hours on end on Saturday afternoons.
- That the malls (having become quite popular) were the best places for playing the 2600 or Intellivisions when you didn't actually have one of your own. I remember walking down to Carsons (or Bergners as it was known in the small, Illinois town where I grew up) from Sears and playing Intellivision when we were sick of the Atari.
- And when we were sick of the Atari and Intellivision, we'd head on down to the Aladdin's Castle arcade, where we'd line the Donkey Kong and Pac Man machines with our tokens and pretty stay there into the evening drinking Orange Julius' and playing pattern after pattern of Pac-Man. (We'd of course memorized all the patterns for all the screens.)
- And when we'd tire of Pac-Man and Donkey, we'd play Tron and Wizard of Wor. I don't know why, but I think of all games from that time, Tron was my favorite. We become so enamored of the light-cycles in tron that we'd go home and code up (in Z80 assembly language, no less) our own version of the light cycle game on the TRS-80's we had.
- And yeah: that was the other cool thing at the mall in our town: Radio Shack. With the TRS-80 Model II (using the 8 inch floppies) and the TRS-80 Model III (with 48K ram!) we'd use the little acoustic modem to call to couple cool BBS systems.
Looking back, I can't believe how much (a) money I spent in arcades in the early 80's and (b) how much time my buddies and I spent at the local mall, going from the Ataris to the Intellvisions to the Aladdin's Castle and then back again. Unbelievable!
And the Sears in our mall, actually had an mini-arcade in the back of the store. Had about 10 stand up games like Scramble and Sinistar and Berzerk -- sort of grade-B games, I guess, but I thought they all kicked ass. We'd shove slugs up the coin return on the machines and give ourselves endless credits. LOL.
Damn, whatever happened to Orange Julius? There was nothing better then a big Orange Julius and one of their yummy-licious hot-dogs! (And the pretzels covered in chocolate.)
LOL.
Here's a true story:
It's Christmas, so I decide to buy myself a Christmas gift -- since I buy the best gifts for myself. They usually involve a lot of money and computer equipment.
Okay, so this Christmas -- couple months ago -- I take the plunge and buy a miniDV camera. I also realize I need editing software. So I get Vegas Video. And what the heck: sound on DV cameras sucks, so I buy myself a couple microphones (a stereo mic, a shotgun mic, and -- because I can -- an XLR mic with a little XLR box that sits between my miniDV cam and the mic.)
Okay, so I've got my whole setup ready to go. I decide I'm gonna shoot some documentaries of my friends, my family, and my dog, Brewster. I spend a couple weeks shooting funny shit -- little movies, a couple of documentaries, and a 15 minute long video of family photographs set to Benny Goodman music. Sorta like what Woody Allen does at the beginning of his movies.
Anyway, the photographs were family photos -- old ones, black and white and color, and the finished video -- complete with zooms into and pans across the old photographs -- was very cool. Like Ken Burns. That sort of thing.
I get the bright idea: hey, I oughta *show* this to someone. So I do. I mail the video to my parents. Now, okay, it's pretty small -- around 5 megs or so -- but I forget my parents are still on a modem. So I get this angry call from my dad: "What the hell did you send us! The modem's been nonstop for an hour!"
A photograph video, I told him.
"Cripes, I couldn't figure out what it was! I thought it was a virus! I had to restart it five times before I finally gave up."
It dawned on me that, heck, I coulda just put the video on a web page. But I didn't think of that. I just took the edited video and emailed it off to the folks.
Okay, so three days later. I get another call. It's the old man: "Hey we finally downloaded the video! Fantastic! I mailed it off to your aunt!"
Um, I said. I could just put a web page up and she could download the video.
"Too late!" says the old man. "Make more! We love those videos!"
Couple more days pass, and I get this angry call from my aunt: "What the hell is the video you've been sending around? It took me hours to download it! I had to call my ISP! They thought it was a virus."
I pointed out that I didn't send it. I made it, but I didn't send it. "Blame your brother," I told my aunt.
"Cripes!" she says. "Don't ever send me another video. You don't know the headaches I went through to download that thing."
Did you watch it?
"Watch it? I had my ISP zap it off my email account. I was getting account errors, quota errors, you name it!"
But it didn't end there. My dad kept sending this five meg video around. More calls ensued. Angry emails came in from my cousins, uncles, aunts. The gist: don't ever send us a video again.
I'm thinking: cripes, my family is cracked. It's just a five meg video, for chrissake!
But who knows.
Anyway, moral of the story. Normal people do not send videos. Morons (like me) start the ball rolling and actually email videos. But, no, no one sends videos. It's just marketing bullshit.
There's still ill-will about the videos. I didn't think it was a big deal. And I apologized all around. But the damage has been done.
Question: What's the advantage to this MP3 recorder over a minidisc recorder?
I know both recorders use types of compression, but wouldn't your standard MD player offer better overall quality?
(DAT would obviously be better, but I'm trying to figure out why anyone would use this thing over an MD recorder and a decent mic.)
This isn't meant to be a flame or a troll -- I'm curious. I realize MD is limited to the amount of time on an MD tape, but I've used MD to record a lot of Dylan concerts, and always -- almost always, at least -- the sound is superb. The few times the sound hasn't been superb has been my own fault -- cheap mic, bad seating, etc.