Best Things You Never!

Frisky Dingo: The Best Show You Never Watched

2 Comments

If I were to say to you, “People let me tell you about my new best friend, BARNABY JONES!” How would you reply?

 

Most of you would look at me oddly and move on with your lives.  A very small number of people would scream NAP at me.  These people are my people.  They get me.  These are people who have spent the 4 hours experiencing one of my all time favorite shows of all time Frisky Dingo.  Frisky Dingo is a show from 2006 that was canceled after it’s second season, and really no one cared.  I was right there the whole time, loving every second of it, and was truly heart broken when it went away.  I’m going to explain why you should start up your Hulu account right now and dive into the this wonderful show as soon as humanly possible, and take a few guesses at why it went the way of Ronnie under a huge pair of pants.

 

bye Ronnie…

 

LET’S DO THIS!

Continue reading Frisky Dingo: The Best Show You Never Watched →

Celluladies

Diversity in Pop Culture is What Will Save Us

Leave a comment

It’s time to invest in stories from different perspectives!

 

A few months ago, I sat on a fan filmmaking panel at a small fan convention. I proposed the panel and moderated it. The other panelists were a young man/woman filmmaking team who regularly produced content, and an older white man who had made one fan film in the ‘80s. The other woman and I offered the most practical advice, and ended up doing most of the talking (this was a situation where the moderator is one of the panelists, not an outside interviewer), and providing what I feel is a pretty valuable list of advice to new filmmakers interested in making fan films.

 

Yet when the door opened and the young convention volunteer came in to tell us we had five minutes left, he looked at the old white guy and waited for his approval. I kept nodding at him, then waved at him, then finally had to verbally interrupt a point the other woman was making to say THANK YOU to the volunteer before he realized that I was leading the panel and I got his message. It had never occurred to him that the only old white man on the stage was not in charge of the panel.

Continue reading Diversity in Pop Culture is What Will Save Us →

Nerd Culture

On Quitting

Leave a comment

We need to take a step back and look at why we love the things we love.

 

This past weekend, I watched Hannah Gadsby’s comedy special, “Nanette,” on Netflix. It was a revelation. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say her words confirmed and shaped some things that had been percolating at the edges of my subconscious for the last several years. In the special, which you should absolutely watch if you have not yet, Gadsby talks about why she is quitting comedy, how jokes are only two parts — setup and punchline — and not a whole story. Essentially, she says comedians create tensions through their setups so that the punchlines can break it, and she no longer wants to create tension. She wishes to instead create connection. Rather than use comedy to obfuscate her painful past, she tells the rest of the stories that inspired her funniest bits, and the humor goes away, but something so much deeper remains.

 

This week, I had meant to write about why I have quit consuming and engaging with so much of nerd culture in recent years. And while I cannot make quite so eloquent a connection as Hannah Gadsby with the two parts versus a whole story metaphor, I can say that I think it’s to do with how mistaking engaging with pop culture the same as engaging with and influencing our communities.

Continue reading On Quitting →

Bad Nostalgia

It’s Time To Bury Our Firsts

1 Comment

We have a hard time letting go of our childhood favorites, and we’re worse off for it.

 

My geek and nerd history is filled with some wonderful firsts. The first time I saw Star Wars, sitting in front of a small TV watching the trilogy back to back on cable. Seeing Indiana Jones get chased by the boulder through the decrepit ruins for the first time. Witnessing The Delorean’s maiden voyage into the past. Seeing how far down the rabbit hole went in The Matrix. Experiencing Middle Earth for the first time, and then seeing it adapted for the screen. Discovering that Cowboy Bebop was merely the tip of the Anime iceberg. Playing my first tabletop RPG. Saving the galaxy from Reapers and breaking hearts as Commander Shepard. And yet, when I sit down and contemplate these firsts, I find myself wrestling with a desire to relive and repackage the greatest hits of my youth versus putting them to rest and moving on.

 

Today the media landscape has become a veritable King’s Feast of nostalgic geek and nerd content. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has dominated the multiplexes since Iron Man in 2008, and doesn’t look to be slowing down any time soon. We’ve had a Star Wars film come out every year since 2015, as well as comics and cartoons to fill in the blanks. We got a Blade Runner sequel, two more Jurassic Park sequels, a Ghostbusters remake, a Trainspotting sequel, a Beauty and the Beast remake, two Alien prequels, A Mummy remake, and so on. Stranger Things has even tapped into our collective nostalgia for the 80s, giving us familiar synth strings and exceptional set design to transport us back in time. What a wonderful buffet of memory! Grab another plate, stay awhile.

Continue reading It’s Time To Bury Our Firsts →

Celluladies

Yes, Women Can Be Friends!

Leave a comment

Women can be friends.

It’s true! Women can even be amazing friends who support each other. I’ve worked on all-female crews, and the environment is a lovely, supportive safe place where teamwork is paramount, and nobody has to worry about getting sexually harassed or made to feel insignificant. Conflicts still happen and enemies still exist, but when women work together, they can get a lot done and have a good time.

 

Ocean’s 8 did a great job of embracing this. In fact, the teamwork was almost TOO good. There wasn’t enough drama for my taste, and maybe that’s because it was realistic. In real life, an all-female team of thieves would just get shit done and solve problems and not try to dick measure.

 

 

We’re taught that women are catty bitches who see each other as competition, but that doesn’t match what I see in my world.

 

On film, female friendships are often adversarial. For every 9 to 5, you get 10 Working Girls, where women compete for the same job or the same man or both. At some point action directors realized that when you put a woman in a black leather bodysuit and make her fight another woman in a white leather body suit, that turns other men on. As I’ve written before, in any large group, there can be only one woman, which automatically makes other women competition. We’re constantly barraged in pop culture with this idea that women cannot be friends.

 

But the times, they are a’changin’.

Continue reading Yes, Women Can Be Friends! →

Violence in Media

Violence and Hypermasculinity in Film

Leave a comment

“But it’s just so unrealistic. It doesn’t work that way in real life.”

 

As an avid fan of romances, romantic comedies, and other chick flicks, this is a constant refrain from my friends. The thing is, I am an adult woman with a couple LTRs (Long Term Relationships) under my belt and a string of less-than-glamorous personal and romantic mistakes. I am fully aware. What is maddening for me, a grown human with a functioning brain who can separate fantasy from reality, is that I never hear this same criticism lobbied at action films. Romantic comedies are all but dead and buried, largely in part because of this constant asinine chorus designed to question my and other fans’ credibility. But in a world where women fight for their voices to be heard, for bodily autonomy, for equal pay, I’d say we’re doing a lot better at separating our fantasy lives from our real ones than we’re given credit.

 

We live in a world where a man can rape a woman and leave her unconscious behind a dumpster and engender sympathy from a judge. I, and many of you readers, live in a country where mass shootings happen at an alarming rate — all at the hands of men. Boys are discouraged from showing emotion, and even women, in their quest for equality, aspire to be “badass” and “tough” and, ultimately, more like men. Perhaps romance is not the fantasy we should have killed. Instead, we should look at the violence and hypermasculine themes so pervasive in every blockbuster and consider how that impacts us.

Continue reading Violence and Hypermasculinity in Film →

Musicapalooza

An Ocean’s 8 Musicapalooza!

Leave a comment

A Spotify playlist to get your heist on!

Everyone loves a good heist film, and to celebrate the release of Ocean’s 8 this weekend we’ve put together a Spotify Playlist featuring songs so good they’re almost criminal. We’ve got songs by Ben Folds, ABBA, Bruce Springsteen, Metric, Danger Mouse, Gorillaz, Tom Waits, and more!

Continue reading An Ocean’s 8 Musicapalooza! →

Musicapalooza

An Action Point Musicapalooza!

Leave a comment

A Spotify playlist to get your jackass on!

The legacy of Jackass continues this weekend with Johnny Knoxville and Chris Pontius in Action Point, tale about a thoroughly unsafe amusement park that has to fight to stay afloat amidst the competition. As one would expect, there’s a lot of physical gags and pranks to be had and we thought it would be fun to hearken back to the good old days of the Jackass crew with an equally crazy Spotify playlist.

Continue reading An Action Point Musicapalooza! →