Though I enjoyed the book series as a reasonably well-told bleak dystopian story with some interesting social commentary thrown in, I was largely indifferent to the film version of The Hunger Games, as Hollywood’s track record at adapting modern YA publishing phenomena has been less than inspiring.

However, the universe conspired to put me in a seat at a screening this week, and I found myself enjoying it. I didn’t necessarily find it to be the transcendent film experience the rest of America seems to think it is, but all told, it isn’t bad.

What I really liked about the film is that unlike, say, most of the Harry Potter flicks, The Hunger Games actually worked as a film without relying on prior knowledge of the books. There weren’t, for example, any “Marauder’s Map” shaped holes in it – somebody who hadn’t read the books won’t find themselves at a disadvantage in terms of understanding (didn’t stop the girl next to me from constantly filling in background details to her boyfriend the whole time, although she was doing it in spanish, so it could have been a language thing).

One thing I worried about in terms of adaptation to film is that fact that so much of what drives the story is what happens in the main character’s head – much of her survival depends on projecting an outward image that is often in conflict with her thoughts. That sort of thing is hard to pull off on film. The film’s script doesn’t spend a whole lot of time on that aspect of things, preferring to get straight into the action, particularly in the latter half of the film; a fact that many reviewers rightfully pointed out.

However, I didn’t find myself missing it, largely because of the fine work done by Jennifer Lawrence, whose body language and well, “acting” managed to express a lot of that inner conflict, at least to me. When she’s “putting on the mask” for her on-screen audience of Demolition Man extras, the way she carries herself changes. Toward the end, for example, after the arena business is over with, and she and Peeta are returning home to District 12, as victors, and for all appearances, romantic partners, her face is smiling, but her eyes reveal her true feelings of confusion and discomfort. It’s quite good work.

It’s rather a shame that none of the other characters get fleshed out more in the film, but then, most of them don’t get much more in the books, either (except maybe Rue). The other tributes are mostly faceless in the film. I’m tempted, however to let that one go, because the story does focus so much on a single character, and that character’s survival depends, at least in theory, on not growing too attached to other people, and the narrative depends on wringing dramatic tension from the situations where she can’t shrug off that attachment.

As good as that element of the story was, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the film probably could have been better*; for example, the pace was often too frentic throughout, even when it didn’t need to be – it might have worked a bit more effectively if some of the scenes got a little more room to breathe. Most of the arena action is pure disorienting shaky-cam, though I expect that’s just as much to avoid actually showing the rather intense violence of the book in order to hit a rating that would allow much of the target audience to actually get into the theater in the first place as it is trying to ratchet up the feelings of tension within the audience. Mostly, though, what it accomplishes is obscuring more of what’s happening than was probably intended.

One other thing I liked: the score – at least when the banjos kicked in. It just felt right when paired with the Appalachian flavor of District 12. It was a nice surprise; I expected lots of maudlin strings or a youth oriented pop soundtrack geared toward cross-market targeting synergy or whatever the business-speak equivalent would be. I didn’t stay through the credits, though – the tie-in soundtrack hit from some young country pop tart was probably stuffed back there.

That whole target audience angle plays into the larger theater-going experience for me. I see a lot of movies theatrically (it’s a nice way to fill an evening on the road); though I could tell that this film was marketed to an entirely different audience than I usually find myself in. The trailers were different: sure, there was some cross-pollination (Prometheus and Spider-Man), but the rest of felt foreign and Stepheny Meyer heavy – Twilight V, a teaser for The Host, and Snow White and the Huntsman (which actually looks good to me), for the K-Stew crossover. The oddball ad, though? What to Expect While You’re Expecting: The Movie. Yeah, I don’t get it either (and it looks awful).

It’s a strange experience venturing into the world of film marketed toward teenage girls and Twilight-moms. It’s a weird world to visit, looking at it from the perspective of someone who’s spent most of his life in the golden target market of “males 18-34” (even if I’ve never quite fit completely with the mainstream), and provides an interesting perspective, even if I don’t want to really spend much time there.

Though it still doesn’t explain how that Prometheus trailer (a movie that is a not-officially-affiliated prequel to Alien) got in there; I guess they were throwing me a bone.

So, in summary. The Hunger Games was rather good, certainly the best of the recent swath of YA novel adaptations. However, the dog-thing in John Carter was a way better dog-thing than the dog-things on display in this movie (I kept expecting one of them to hatch into Rick Moranis as Louis Tully).

_____________________

* – It’s almost like they knew they had a huge built-in audience that was going to see this movie no matter how good or bad it was, so they didn’t put in any more effort than they really needed to: if a solid B- will do, why go for the A, even if it wasn’t that much extra trouble? I’m not sure I agree with that, but then, I’m not a movie studio.

I must say, I’m becoming a a bit of a fan of finding humor in behind-the-scenes images from the production of The Avengers.This one’s a bit less universal than the last one I posted, but if you recognize the guy on the left, it’s unlikely that you’ll need any explanation:

I look forward to reading the rest of Steve Hyden’s six-part(!) series about his experience being a life-long R.E.M. fan over at the av club for a lot of reasons, but mostly because of the first installment’s uncanny ruminations about the experience of being “a fan” in the way that only a certain type of teenager can.

I didn’t become a “fan” of R.E.M. until well past both my teenage years and the band’s indie cred sell-by date, but that doesn’t mean I don’t relate to the time period Hyden describes, filling me both with “wow, I’m old” reflexive waxing and further wishes that I had jumped on the train toward, as guitarist Peter Buck called it, the “acceptable edge of the unacceptable stuff” a bit earlier.

I know now that I wasn’t emotionally mature or experienced enough (unsurprisingly, I was always a bit backward about that stuff) to “get” this sort of semi-fringe material back then, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t get the experience of being an adolesecent teenage fan – my targets were just a little bit more blue-collar and mainstream.

I’m going to steal Hyden’s opening words here, because he makes the point really well:

When you love a band—especially when you’re young—you end up forming a weird, sacred, and irrational bond that’s entirely one-sided and exists only in your mind. Even when that love lasts for years and years, outlasting “real” friendships and romantic entanglements and living on as one of the only constants in your life outside of family (and maybe not even family), it’s still essentially a construction you’ve made up for the sake of entertainment. Bands can’t love you back; the best they can offer is an abstract, “Hello Cleveland!” kind of appreciation.

Being a fan is a more socially acceptable version for having an imaginary friend.

At the time of life Hyden describes, my socially acceptable imaginary friend was Bon Jovi.

I started having my musical awakening – that is, being aware of music outside of the context of whatever my family had on in the background – somewhere around 1985-86. The first record I remember going to local department store and buying with my own money, was Springsteen’s Born in the USA. I played the bearings out of that cassette tape, enjoying the blue-collar bar rock, and “got” the general emotional content, having absorbed enough of the small Rust Belt town ennui by osmosis, though the record’s overt anti-Reagan-Era populism was completely lost to me, because hey, I was eleven, and lived in a home that was largely apolitical, at least as far as I could tell.

Luckily for me, there soon appeared a younger, less political Jersey Shore analogue riding on the acceptable edge of the hair metal wave to sweep me up. A band that tapped into that blue-collar Northeast sensibility without all that teeth-gnashing resentment; less drowning one’s sorrows at the steelworker’s bar and more party time kegger on the beach, an act that still played into the oddly mascara-ed machismo of the LA glam metal era, but without losing sight of its east coat rock & roll roots. It was pretty much calculated to fill a particular developmental niche for me.

Somewhere in that whole “tween” period (not that we called it that), I got my first “stereo”, a Sears special cabinet with separate speakers, a dual cassette deck and a turntable (at the time that vinyl was already on the way out) for Christmas. Along with that gift, I got a couple of actual long-playing records, including Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet.

To be honest, I didn’t totally “get” all of that record either; but the whole business about how “she lost more than that in my back seat, baby” in “Never Say Goodbye” felt refreshingly scandalous, not unlike being let temorarily into the “grown up” world of a cool older brother I didn’t have or the much-admired older cousin I did have but never really connected with. Like millions of budding teenagers before me, I’d found my initial outlet for slowly developing some sort of understanding of the emotions of puberty, and a means of developing a (sometimes fatally flawed) road map for navigating (largely theoretical) teenage relationships.

I also relate to the idea of taking perceived slights against the object of one’s fandom personally – it was the mid-eighties, and metal, in all it’s hair/glam/speed/thrash variations, was in full swing (it was pretty much the only thing swinging besides the AM gold flavored top 40 on the one pop radio station one could reliably tune in). Despite all the makeup and hairspray the bands all used, *my* band was, for myriad reasons, considered a “chick band” by the burnouts with Marlboro-scented jean jackets emblazoned with Metallica back patches. I was crushed that this proto-music snob crowd (who I found simultaneously intimidating, frightning, and yet somehow noble in their dedication to their chosen aesthetic) looked down on my obsession, but was given (false) hope by the fact that I shared a common passion with some pretty girls who I had confusing but intriguing (and ultimately unresolved) feelings about.

But, fandom at that age, in that era, was primarily personal – it’s not like the cons I attend today, where the best part of the experience is connecting with other like minded individuals over shared passions – I pursued knowledge largely by myself, listening and re-listening to my cassette copy of New Jersey for some new wrinkle of understanding or meaning, digesting articles in rock magazines bought at the grocery store or fleeting “news” reports on MTV. I scoured record store racks for b-sides, movie soundtrack spots and the one-in-a-million shot of a mis-shipped japanese import, and cursed the fact that I didn’t live within 100 miles (a distance that might as well have been light years back then) of a venue where my heroes might be playing.

But, the experience was mine, and despite the fact that I was mostly an overweight social outcast, the music and lyrics Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora wrote somehow spoke to me, and provided the crutch that I, like so many teenagers, needed to work my way through awkward adolescence.

It’s kind of embarassing to think about now, especially since I seem to have largely grown apart from that mindspace – Bon Jovi’s aesthetic, then and (especially) now, just don’t speak to me much anymore. I changed, and to a lesser extent, so did they (I guess the answer to the lyrical question in the title of this post ended up being “no”, at least in my case). However, I’ll always have fond memories of when I finally got to see the band live from the nosebleed seats in the early 90s in Philadelphia, and will still occasionally pick up a guitar and find I can still effortlessly knock out the acoustic intro hook from Wanted Dead or Alive without thinking about it. That sort of obsessive devotion at the right time of life somehow becomes an inextricable part of your DNA.

Since then, there’ve been other cases of incurable fandom to supplant this initial one – often smaller, niche artists: Barenaked Ladies, The Badlees, Jonathan Coulton – many of whom I’ve managed to meet, or in one or two cases, befriend over the years. Then there are the “missed opportunity” discoveries of bands that shone brightly and then self-destructed years before you knew they existed – The Replacements, and to a lesser extent for me, R.E.M. Those, however, are all seemingly more “adult” experiences, with different kinds of emotion and appreciation. One’s interaction with artistic expression as an adult is different; more textured, layered, with a deeper understanding due to having lived more life, and thus have a wider base to relate from. Being able to see and appreciate things through the adult lens is one of the great benefits of being an adult to begin with; it’s a great thing to experience.

None of it, though is really as pure and formative an experience as the fandom you had for the band whose poster you had on your bedroom wall when you were fourteen.

3/22 – Updated with an example of how this might have gone. See below.

I saw John Carter this evening. In glorious IMAX 3D. I spent eighteen dollars for a ticket, for that is the going rate in the Washington D.C. market.

It was totally worth every penny.

I had a blast with this flick – a great, sweeping action/adventure story; lots of fun, and feels a bit like a throwback to the kind of family-friendly adventure movies they just don’t make any more – a little bit of Indiana Jones, a little bit of Star Wars, a little bit of Flash Gordon and all the other lesser, fun Saturday afternoon on cable flicks that aped the trends they set. I guess it’s kind of come full circle, because Edgar Rice Burroughs’ adventure stories, such as the source material for this particular film, were, in many cases, the original source for the adventure tropes those great 70s and 80s movies were built on.

The plot does meander a bit in the middle, and it does vary a bit from the source novel, working in bits of later novels, striking off in new directions, and papering over much of the century old sexism and whatnot that modern audiences aren’t comfortable with, but a lot of the changes are actually pretty good story decisions, and add up to an enjoyable viewing experience refreshingly free of cynicism and grim-and-grittyness.

I love that Dejah Thoris has something to do besides look pretty (although she most definitely is) and get rescued, and I’m very much impressed with some of the best CGI/mocap characters I’ve ever seen on film (though I suppose the fact that the Tharks are nine feet tall, green, and have four arms provides somewhat of a bridge over the Uncanny Valley). And Woola, the dog-thing, steals every scene it’s in.

So, I say with enthusiasm, this one comes highly recommended; it’ll probably be one of my favorites of the year, at this rate. Which makes me sad, because it’s being heralded as a great big flop. There were two other people in the theater with me today.

The marketing, as many have said, was all wrong. Nobody knew what this movie was supposed to be about, and the title, trailers, and advertising didn’t give anyone any idea. There was no context at all. Seriously, every pre-teen boy in America ought to be jumping around playing John Carter in the backyard and feeling strange stirrings down below about Dejah Thoris – this should be their Labyrinth at least, if not their Star Wars. Sure, the source material may be 100 years old and kind of forgotten, but it’s classic sci-fi/fantasy created by the guy who invented Tarzan! It’s got action, romance, funny jokes not based on pop culture references! There are daring heroes, beautiful ass-kicking princesses, mysterious bad guys, strange yet noble alien warriors, skies full of graceful airships, and a freakin’ space dog!

Disney should have been able to sell this in it’s sleep. But it didn’t for some reason. Maybe some day we’ll find out why. In the meantime, I really hope word-of-mouth somehow manages to give this movie some legs, because it really is worth your time.

UPDATE: I recently discovered this, thanks to a link over at ain’t it cool news: a fan-cut trailer that seems to have an understanding of how Disney should have sold this:

That (↑) is a bit closer to movie I saw this week.

I truly was intending to keep making these record reviews a regular thing, though I can’t seem to manage it lately – it’s not that I’m not listening to music, it’s that I’ve not been bothering to write down my thoughts on a lot of the CDs I’m listening to. As I said, I’d keep doing this as long as it was fun, and while it still is, I’m finding other things to do that take precedence, for good or ill. I’d really like to make it regular again.

In any case, I present four more reviews for discs I’ve listened to in the last month or so; good records all around, three old, one new. I hope my writing does them justice:

♦ Queensryche – Operation: Mindcrime: This record is where Queensryche really started giving into their prog-rock tendencies, attempting a high-concept heavy metal “rock opera” in an era when such things just weren’t done. Depite the ostentatious trappings, the record was considered a hit, largely on the strength of singles “Eyes of A Stranger” and “I Don’t Believe In Love”, which, along with “Revolution Calling”, I’d call the highlights of the disc. For all the times I’ve listened to it, however, I’ve never quite figured out what sort of story the song cycle was trying to tell; there are references to drugs, underground revolutionary organizations, prostitutes turned nuns, double-crosses and murders, and the story seems to end up exactly where it began. Even after reading the plot summary on Wikipedia, I’m still not sure what’s going on. This hasn’t stopped me from continuing to puzzle through it, because, if you consider it solely on it’s merits as a rock record, it’s eminently listenable, if not quite as good as Empire, the record that came after it.

♦ Michael Troy – The Journey Home: In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve known this guy for years – he’s practically family, and I’m an unashamed fan of his work. That said, take it as you will that I enjoyed this new collection of intrumental piano pieces a great deal. All of the tracks fall within the classical-esque/new age realm; compositions full of sweeping arpeggios, grand dramatic chords and interesting tricks of tempo atypical of the genre (owing, no doubt, to Troy’s experience in other styles of music – there are a few very “metal” riffs in there), presented in easy to enjoy pop song-sized packages. The instrumentation is spare and effective – clean piano carrying the bulk of the melody and rhythm, supported by the sound of a simple string quartet holding down chords and accents. There are several standout tracks, including “Lost” and “Longing”, though for my money, it’s hard to beat the sweeping pop sensibility of “Final Victory”, which deserves to find a place scoring a sweeping helicopter shot of a beautiful landscape in a major motion picture some day soon. It’s a worthy listen: the perfect soundtrack for winding down after a stressful day, bouying one’s spirits to take on a new challenge, or simply because one wishes to enjoy a pleasing aural experience.

♦ The Badlees – Amazing Grace: This is another one of those that I’m surprised I haven’t gotten too sooner, as the band was such a big part of the soundtrack of my life for so damned long. This disc was came out in ’99, during the “dark” period between the Polydor/Universal deal expired and Up There, Down Here got pulled off the shelf and released by Ark 21. As a record, it’s a much different animal than anything that was recorded by the band previously; recorded in Bret Alexander’s home studio in a couple of months, it’s simultaneously Alexnder’s show and a showcase for the group’s other voices, if that even makes sense. The “classic” Badlee formula included Pete Palladino putting voice to the words Alexander wrote (often with the assistance of songwriter Mike Naydock). Starting here, the vocals get passed around – everybody but Ron Simasek gets at least one lead vocal, with Alexander covering lead on five of eleven tracks. Likewise, songwriting duties are spread more evenly amongst band members, allowing everyone’s voice a chance to shine; a pattern that continues through the band’s sporadic modern output and paved the way for the various solo records over the years. Essentially, this is the Badlees’ White Album. In any case, these changes, combined with the lack of apparent attention paid to label interests, led to some interesting places, particularly “Amazing Grace to You” is a frantic, sonic assault of a song in 5/4 time; an odd, yet inspired choice for a lead single. Also of note is the oddly catchy “Beyond these Walls” (perhaps the most “badlees” of the collection, with the wry irony ratcheted up a few notches), and “Time Turns Around”, which plays up the Tom Waits vibe and pays lyrical tribute to the band’s biggest hit.

♦ Jimmy Page and Robert Plant: No Quarter: This record is another one of those MTV Unplugged tie-in albums, though the Jimmy Page & Robert Plant “Unledded” special came towards the end of that show’s run, and wasn’t officially part of the program. When it happened in 1994, it was a big deal; a semi-reunion of Led Zeppelin (though without bassist John Paul Jones) was something to see, and Page, Plant, and their backing band delivered a mostly unplugged set of Zeppelin tunes and a few other tunes, all performed with a Morrocan-Middle Eastern flavor. In many ways, it’s actually the middle-eastern stuff that makes the record more interesting than a straight Zeppelin reunion – the re-workings of tunes like “The Battle of Evermore” and “Kashmir” (the big crowd-pleasing closer) are lighter on Plant’s signature vocal pyrotechnics, though with the addition of the new instrumentation and arrangements, remain interesting and often surprising. Of the singles, I like the version of folk standard (and Zeppelin II track) “Gallows Pole” better than “Thank You”, but that didn’t stop the latter from becoming a big radio hit. Also of note is that the resulting “Unledded” world tour featured the Badlees as the opening act (supporting River Songs) on several North American dates.

It’s been a while since I talked about the fish, but over the last weeks and, actually, months, I’ve changed things up a bit, and I’m currently rather excited about my little box of water.

First, it actually is back to one box of water again. Since I “adopted” a family friend’s oddly stocked fish tank when they moved, I’d been running two tanks in my living room, and finding that two tanks weren’t necessarily working with my floor plan; the second tank was, by necessity wedged in a corner, and didn’t really get the kind of walk-by attention it deserved. A little over a year after tey moved in, the last of the elderly adoptees passed on (I did the best I could for all of them, but they were all old, and tank conditions weren’t always optimal before I got them). I’d kept the tank running, but with a small population, largely due to interia, but I wasn’t happy with the arrangement, so I hatched a plan to move the remaining inhabitants (a small school of harlequin rasboras and another of tiny panda corydoras) over to the big molly tank, to which I added a much bigger Penguin bio-wheel filter – I believe in over-filtering (in this case, filtering 30 gallons with a filter rated for 60).

That was six months or ago, and all are doing fine. The two cory packs came together happily, apparently deciding that apart from relative size and some small speckles, they’re all the same thing. The harlequins are doing the schooling thing they’re supposed to do, and they get along fine with my self-perpetuating family of mollies. It’s a big happy community tank, just as it should be.

Another interesting occurrence is the fact that I’m now running a totally natural planted tank, thanks to the addition of a cheap secondary light source. I am now plastic plant and decor free, with a fast growing population of java moss hanging on to some pretty african mopani driftwood (which creates a great haven for molly fry), and seemingly healthy crop of java ferns filling the tank out. The rest is largely self-harvested river rocks and some artfully broken terra cotta pots, which make for nice caves and hiding places.

My cheap and easy light source? a set of Dioder LED strips from IKEA, affixed to the outside edges of the back glass. They significantly update the watts per gallon on the tank, which makes the plants happy, and they are able to change and cycle colors, which makes for nice occasional mood lighting for the room, but mostly serves as a subdued blue “moon light” in the evenings, giving human spectators a decent view of nocturnal behaviors of the fish:

All this tank decoration description is really just build-up to my most recent aquatic acquisition. This weekend, as we often do, we made a stop at our local PetCo to pick up cat supplies. Of course, I usually poke my nose into the fish section – I don’t generally have good luck with Petco fish (I have occasional issues with the way they care for them in the store), but they sometimes get in some interesting things. This week I found a fish I’d always been interested in but had never seen for sale before: the bristlenose plecostomus.

Common Plecos are cheap and everywhere – they’re sold as “algae eaters” as babies, maybe two inches long. The problem is the fact that these cool suckermouth catfish grow rapidly and top out around twenty-four inches long. Anyone who’s been in the hobby for a while has run into a foot-long pleco returned to the pet store because the owners didn’t have the room. I saw one once who’d spent a bit too long in a ten gallon tank, and due to the lack of space had a severely kinked spine. I’ve never had enough tank for one, so as neat as I always thought they were, I never got one, because I couldn’t care for it responsibly.

On the various fish boards I read from time to time, I’d often heard of the bristlenose, a smaller variety that tops out around five inches, and the males develop interesting feelers on their faces as they mature. Though as much as it’s virtues were extolled, I was never able to find one, even in the few good independent fish stores I still have left in my area. I was surprised, and delighted, then, to find a tank full of one-inch juvenile albino bristlenoses at the Petco around the corner; I decided to risk it with Petco stock (mostly I worry about introducing pet store water to my habitat), and picked one up.

He or She (you can’t tell yet at this age – it’s probably only a month old) seems to be settling in fine, working the glass and plant leaves for algae, but always quick to retreat to the safety of it’s chosen haven behind the bubble stone when someone else bigger passes too close. It’s most active in the evening once I turn off the bright lights. It’s still very small, but within a couple of months, it should be the biggest critter in the tank, which should change the group dynamics a bit. I’m looking forward to watching it grow, and the youngest has already decided that it’s her catfish, and is considering naming it “Princess” (which could be awkward if it ends up being a boy).

I didn’t get out to see John Carter this weekend. I had passes lined up for the DC preview screening last Tuesday, though my schedule and the US Postal Service couldn’t get themselves in sync, so I saw a Salmon Fishing in the Yemen preview screening instead (a short review: good in the way that all those small, high-concept British films are good…worth a watch on a sleepy afternoon).

Yes, I had my choice of two different free preview screenings last Tuesday. This keeps happening. Once you’re in the system, you’re in).

Anyway, I’m honestly looking forward to seeing John Carter, though, despite the fact that it’s marketing has been utter crap, beginning with the fact that they didn’t call it John Carter of Mars for some reason.

Most reviews, though, have been pretty good – I hope the word of mouth carries this one, because the source material is proper classic pulp adventure: swashbuckling heroes, beautiful princesses, cool monsters, and a simple, yet epic story (Edgar Rice Burroughs’ original novels are in the public domain and readily available for your e-reader of choice – Project Gutenberg is a good place to start. They’re well worth the read). This movie should be extremely easy to sell, but Disney somehow botched it.

I will see it one day soon, and I’m pretty sure I’ll enjoy it. I really hope that the dialogue retains some of the original novels’ dramatic and operatic tone. For example, here’s a single paragraph from the second book in the series, The Gods of Mars (written in 1914!):

“Rot, Tars Tarkas,” I cried, “those voices come from beings as real as you or as I. In their veins flows lifeblood that may be let as easily as ours, and the fact that they remain invisible to us is the best proof to my mind that they are mortal; nor overly courageous mortals at that. Think you, Tars Tarkas, that John Carter will fly at the first shriek of a cowardly foe who dare not come out into the open and face a good blade?”

To me, that’s just about perfect for a golden age sci-fi hero. No doubt, this, at least in part, is where guys like Stan Lee got their gloriously overwrought and bombastic prose style in the early days of Marvel comics.

Damn, now I’m imagining Warlords of Mars as visualized by Jack Kirby. I wonder if that exists?

…at least the future according to 1962. Here’s an interesting piece branching off from reflections on the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle; one of those fun essays where we in “the future” reflect on the predictions about jetpacks and flying cars, and lament the fact that we still don’t have them. It’s a fun read, though, as these pieces always are; giving us us a chance to reflect on how far we’ve come in some areas, and how little progress we’ve made in other areas.

My favorite bit though, is this bit about who wasn’t involved in designing 1962’s vision of the future:

Again, like most of these imperial exercises, the Seattle World’s Fair depended on its sponsors–civic boosters, corporations, and the government–to create its vision of the future. They made a conscious decision to ignore the people who had spent the most time thinking about the future, science fiction writers. Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov were both approached to pitch projects for the fair and both were rejected. Not that they would have done a lot better; despite Bob’s most earnest hopes, hot young women still do not cluster around smart guys to form polygamous communities.

I guess there’s a lesson here, and that that lesson is that while we can all make guesses as to what the future may bring, odds are that we’re going to get most of it wrong, and what we get wrong, we’ll get wrong spectacularly, and often totally miss the big developments entirely. This doesn’t make idle speculation a fruitless pursuit – one never knows when someone’s fantastical daydream will become the next great leap forward for human society or technology – and at the very least, people fifty years from now will have something to look back on and laugh about.

Though is suspect that they won’t have consumer-grade jetpacks or flying cars in 2062 either, and more’s the pity.

I say this as someone who’s only finished the first novel of A Song of Ice and Fire and half of the Game of Thrones TV series, but I really, really, really agree with Sers Paul and Storm here:

Now I know that George R.R. Martin is not not my bitch, and it’s not that much of a rush, because I have like five books left before I catch up, but I’d kind of like novels to keep pace with the HBO show, you know, because Peter Dinklage is awesome..

Just trying to wake up about now. Maybe this music will help.

1. “Texas Lady” – Les Paul & Mary Ford
2. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (live) – The Hooters
3. “A Million Miles Away” – The Plimsouls
4. “European Swallow” – The Refreshments
5. “The Human Hosepipe” – Harry and the Potters
6. “Three Little Pigs” – Green Jello
7. “Man in Black” – Johnny Cash
8. “Getting Better” – The Beatles
9. “Castlevania 2” – The Minibosses
10. “Little Tornado”- Aimee Mann

Maybe it helped a little bit. Green Jello was kind of loud.