I’m writing because I’ve lost my cell phone, and I’d really appreciate it if each of you could reply to this message with your phone number… I never wrote it down on a piece of paper or in a book, or backed it up on a computer, because cell phones are historically quite dependable, and not prone to getting lost or stolen—at least, not where I come from, a place where there is neither crime nor personal failure. I come from Iceland.
— One of the funniest New Yorker shorts I’ve read in a while.
Found this on the subway. I guess someone actually saw it?
I Watched "Trekkies"
It’s strange - in 1997, the profiling of wacky nerds is treated as a sufficiently entertaining discovery, but in the post-LotR/post-Buffy/post-Matrix/post-Harry Potter world of 2008, it’s less dynamic filmmaking and more a startling reminder of how recently cult fandom has moved in from the fringes to become a integral (and profitable) part of the mainstream. The film ends with positing that Trek fandom will never die and in fact last forever, but with that prophecy misses a third option - that the obsession of Trekkies would end up white noise against a field of greater, commoditized geekdom.
The lo-fi, socially uncoordinated Trekkies of 1997 revel in their relationship with the franchise - they’ve co-opted a network television series, a corporate product, and transformed it into something uniquely their own. However, in 2008, when 100,000 people attend an event called “ComicCon” and a Google image search for “cosplay” returns over three million results, fan devotion isn’t a suprise or even an annoyance, but a given and a variable, to be factored in and calculated as a product is prepped for market. Was there some awkward, gangly innocence lost as fandom went corporate? Maybe, but it’s pretty entertaining to see multi-national corporations bow down at the altar of a subculture (culture?) that, less than a decade ago, they could only ridicule and dismiss.
My friend Daniel, who’s been kind enough to let me stay in his ridiculously big house*, is a “one item per fridge” kind of guy. This seemed a lot funnier last night.
*After New York, the majority of houses out here seem ridiculously big.
TheWB.com Launches
Tagline: “It’s TV! Online!!” (Punctuation my own.)
I will give them props for getting behind The Jeannie Tate Show, and A Boy Wearing Makeup gets points for bizareness of concept alone. The custom intro clips on show landing pages are kinda cool, too, if not entirely useful or necessary. Overall, though, with clumsy design and half of these series living elsewhere (usually with more episodes), the site still has a way to go to justify its existence. Considering all the original content Warner Bros has bought over the past year, I’m interested to see what they roll out in the weeks to come.
It’s as though YouTube grew up and got a job.
— How I will be describing Hulu from now on, courtesy Penny Arcade.
Imagine I told you we’re going to shoot on superexpensive cameras, using rolls of celluloid made in China that are a one-time-use product susceptible to scratches and that can’t be exposed to light. And you can’t even be sure you got the image until they’re developed. And you have to dip them in a special fluid that can ruin them if it’s mixed wrong. People would think I was crazy.
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