The last big rock show I went to was Queensryche last month, and although I enjoyed the show a great deal, so much of the audience spent the whole thing standing in the aisles (and in my way, more often than not) watching not the show itself, but the little four or five inch representation of the show on the screen of their smartphone. Everybody angling for the “best” angle and such interrupted my ability to take it all in, and I’m sure all the amateur cinematographers didn’t enjoy it as much as they probably could have.

I get that camera phones are ubiquitous these days; heck, I shot a couple of photos myself at some recent shows, and I often post photos of my shows that other people are kind enough to post (I know I’m still naive enough to get a kick out of people digging our stuff enough to take photos and share them…). But, I also understand that not all artists, especially big deal folks who want to use a small intimate show to work out new material before release (and don’t want substandard versions to leak out*) might not feel the same way. Bootlegging has gotten a hell of a lot easier since a friend-of-a-friend acquaintance used to sneak a crap recording rig into Philly clubs stuffed into a couple of Altoids tins to get lo-fi recordings for the tape trade. Back in the olden days (i.e. the early-90s), people still used “the internet” for this stuff, but dialup was still a thing and mp3 wasn’t, so people haunted BBS systems and snail-mailed TDKs to each other – relatively low volume and low tech.

Today, stuff is on Youtube before people leave the venue. The entertainment industry is aware, and trying (and usually failing to stay ahead of the game). A few years ago when I was more of a road warrior for work, I’d managed to get myself on a private list to score passes for advance press screenings of upcoming movies. More than once, the organizers would confiscate cell phones from attendees before granting admission to the theater – a popular model was giving everybody a brown paper bag to write a name/number on; stuffing the phone/camera inside, and stashing it in a box under the counter until after the show, where it could be retrieved with ID or a claim ticket. Inelegant, and stuff still got out, but it was an effort.

The industry’s latest response is this, a proximity driven lock pouch, that won’t open inside the performance space. I suppose this’ll work, though people’s complaints about legitimate emergency use are probably valid. It’s another try, but I suspect it probably won’t catch on or be particularly effective, because none of this stuff is.

I’m not begrudging the industry here, in part because they’d rather sell us the best version of their work on their schedule, and also because I’m old enough to remember going to live shows before smartphones (or cell phones at all) were a thing, and we totally survived. Heck, I think we enjoyed ourselves more. Excuse me while I put my old man pants on (white belt and shoes optional), but I kind of miss when people just enjoyed the experience. Sometimes, your memory is good enough -enjoy the spontaneity of the performance play out; take the whole picture in, and don’t worry about framing everything for later consumption (and honestly, how often does anybody really play these poorly shot amateur videos back anyway – most of them are un-viewable, and just take up storage space on the SD card!).

Trust me, you’re probably missing some really cool stuff, not the least of which is the communal experience everyone in the venue – artist and audience alike – could be having with each other. When everyone’s deep into their phones, we’re all there, but we’re not *there*. Also, as a performer, I’m able to give a lot more to an audience when I can see people’s faces and reactions, rather than a bunch of rectangles with lenses on them; live performance, especially the kind of shows I go to and play, really is a collaborative experience; If you’re out there watching through the filter of your phone, you’re not doing your part, and, as a wise performer friend of mine is fond of saying, “this’ll all go a lot more smoothly if you just participate.” You’re also cheating yourself out of the best part of the experience.

Here’s the thing – the only thing we can really ever take with us is our memories and our experiences; don’t miss out on the moment you’re in because you’re trying (in vain) to capture it for later; it doesn’t really work that way, no matter how good your photo or recording might be (and trust me, it’s probably not that good). Any recording of, say, Jonah Knight‘s “last” show at Ravencon this year, when he brought everybody together in a circle in front of the stage and we all sang “King of Nebraska” together is going to pale in the face of the memory of having been there and being an active participant in the experience.

Put the phone away. Heck, if you can manage, leave it in the car or at home. Enjoy life in the round; outside the viewfinder. Be part of the experience.

_____________________________

* – this was the reasoning that musician friends at the time always gave, anyway. I don’t think it’s wrong, necessarily, but it never quite resonated with me; maybe I’m just not the perfectionists they were. Live, spontaneous performance, even with a little tarnish on the shine, works for me the way a lot of professional studio recordings don’t..

It’s Friday morning, and it’s looking like a slow day to wind out the week. I’ll take it.

The week itself has been, well, a week. I woke up ill one day this week, so cashed in one of my roughly three years’ work of unused sick leave (you have to do that now and then). I’m mostly better now. It’s been oppressively humid the last couple of days, and a series of wicked storms rolled through the region last night, which made the temperatures a lot more pleasant this morning, but seems to have caused chaos, damage, and power outages (and in one case, related to the latter, ice cream for breakfast) among my many friends on the north west side of the metro area. For once, my side of city was spared, although there seem to be a few limbs down here and there.

Today is also the last day of school. I would assume the kids are happy, though I didn’t see much of them yesterday. One is done with finals (and thus doesn’t have to go in today) and went to bed early last night, and the others just kinda do what they do. Monday’s going to be the rough one for me, leaving when everyone else stays (though I have plans for them, oh yes, I have plans…**maniacal laugh**), but at least I don’t have to lever the early one out of bed.

I also got some cool music producer stuff done this week, taking some of the vocal tracks I recorded last weekend with my friend Jenny and turning them into something approaching listenable (she likes it anyway – I’m not convinced, and still need to get some fiddle on it). I’ll share some stuff one of these days; I’m not sure it’s ready for public consumption just yet. The band/project/musical collective/whatever the hell you want to call these people I’m making noise with locally lately supposedly has a gig in town in a couple of weeks (a 30 minute set opening for a friend’s improv troupe), though schedules are conspiring to make it tough to rehearse with these people, or nail down two more uptempo crowd-pleasing cover tunes to fill out our alotted time. I know *I* can wing it (because I’m cool like that), but a lot of these folks aren’t as experienced with this sort of thing, so I’m a little nervous about all of it coming together.

But it’s actually a good kind of nervous. Again, I’ll take it. Small favors.

Not sure what’s going on this weekend; we might be gaming with friends; I gotta confirm that. I also suspect that the overtly sneaky stuff going on the last couple of days that I’m not supposed to see indicates that there might be plans made for me on Sunday. We’ll see.

Anyway…some tunes that Pandora spit out. This week’s mix is…eclectic

1. “Battle Metal” – Turisas
2. “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” – Vampire Weekend
3. “Don’t Dream It’s Over” – Crowded House
4. “Maps” – Yeah Yeah Yeah
5. “Say it Ain’t So” – Weezer
6. “Iron” – Ensiferium
7. “From Nowhere (Baardsen Remix)” – Dan Croll
8. “Come Together” – The Beatles
9. “Ophelia” – The Lumineers
10. “Theresa’s Soundworld” – Sonic Youth

Hell, it’s been a weekend.

Saturday I spent some time with a musician friend working some demo recordings for a project we’re working on. We got some nice vocal tracks down for one tune (it’s a good one) before life’s problems started to intrude on the creative process. Everything seems to have worked itself out, thankfully, though we didn’t get as much done as we’d like. The recording rig I’ve built over the last year or two seems to travel well and I got some nice pieces I can work with. Seems I’m now a producer.

Rest of the afternoon involved some grocery shopping, some household stuff, some video games, and waiting around to pick up my sixteen year old who can’t drive yet from a friend’s graduation party. I gotta get that kid a license, stat. We also got a bit of a chuckle out of the “unusually small crowd” (like less than 25% capacity at the Colliseum) at Trump’s rally downtown. Sometimes my metro area makes me proud.

Of course, I woke up Sunday morning to the news from Orlando, which, by any definition, is devastating and horrible. Last count I heard was 51 dead, taking this well past the most horrific mass shooting in modern American history.

I found out about it when a friend (who happened to be near Orlando this weekend for a baby shower) mentioned that she was prompted by Facebook to “check in as being safe” because it pinged her location as near the shooting at Pulse. That Facebook implemented code to do such thing is worrying, but also kind of useful (we have things like weather emergencies and whatnot), but the fact that it *was* useful to someone in my circle because of this makes me unhappy, but not as unhappy as the fact that there are 51 one people who were unable to check in because one guy decided to shoot up a dance club early Sunday morning.

Let me talk about statistics and frequency and maybe a little bit of armchair analysis a bit:

The fact that somebody’s tracking the statistic for “most horrible mass shooting incident” in this country is awful. The fact that we have enough data points for this kind of event, horrifying by any objective measure, to establish different data gradients says that something’s wrong with the way we’re doing things.

Leaving aside any discussion of methodology and definition of what a “mass shooting” is (and there’s probably a discussion to be had regarding that), the Gun Violence Archive reports, as of Monday morning, we’ve had 136 “mass shooting” incidents in the US in 2016 so far. I am aghast.

This data leaves aside possible motive (and in the case of the Orlando shooting this weekend, it’s pretty clear that anti-LGBT attitudes were behind it – I’m not sold on the ISIS connection people are trying to draw, other than as a justification/cover on the part of the shooter; I think that’s also what was going on with San Bernadino), which I think is proper when we’re talking about these things. People have all kinds of reasons (valid and otherwise) to get angry about things; hell, the social and political discourse and division in this country, as well as our whole historical “rugged individualist” narrative we pride ourselves on, practically guarantees it.

Of course, other Western/industrialized nations have the same, or equivalent reasons for anger, frustration, and division; I’d argue that some of the others are probably more inflamed (i.e. Western Europe and the current refugee crisis, economic strife in Greece, Spain, etc). However, these nations don’t have the incidence of home-grown (domestic, radicalized or not, whatever…) shootings we do. The most obvious difference is the easy access to guns in this country. And troubled folks with guns (leaving alone the incidences of veterans with untreated PTSD we have, and other folks dealing with depression and anxiety and other mental issues* left untreated because of the state of health care in this country) tend to lead to bad things, with folks either hurting themselves, or, in this case, many, many others.

Now before somebody tears into me for maybe saying that guns aren’t a constantly good and virtuous thing (because that happens – look at your social media feed this morning, it’s there – go ahead, I’ll wait) because of the vibrant and robust gun culture in this country (just ask the open carry idiots who like to stand around outside my local WaWa drinking coffee with Glocks on their hips for some reason that I’m sure isn’t political at all), I’m not against gun ownership, necessarily; I grew up with, and have an appreciation for hunting culture, understand the appeal of shooting as a sport, and all that. I’m not necessarily down with the fetishization of weapons, personally, but I think I get it, especially when I look at my affection for musical istruments.

That said, as solid and heavy as a Gibson Les Paul is, it’s really unlikely there’s going to be a rash of mass killings by people using one as a weapon.

Maybe that’s not the best example – motor vehicles might be a better comparison; though it’s not perfect one. per the IIHS, there’ve been a little over 32,000 deaths due to vehicle crashes so far this year (Per the GVA, we’re looking at about 6000 total gun deaths for all reasons so far this year). Now, automobiles are probably more ubiquitous, necessary, and widespread than firearms are, but are just as dangerous, if not more, when pointed in the wrong direction or used irresponsibly. Nobody seems to have an issue with screening, registration, and required insurance for automobile ownership and operation; I’d posit that a similar system for firearms ownership might make sense, and a lot of the gun laws we have on this country get us part way there. A few more tweaks here and there would probably get us there.

Of course, there’s no Second Amendment for cars, and AAA is nowhere near as single-focused and political as the NRA. Car culture is looked at differently. I’m not sure why. Other than the 25-year import rule or the chicken tax, most reasonable car people are totally cool with automotive law in the US. The gun folks are constantly focused on somebody taking their weapons away and stealing their freedoms or whatever. I suspect it has a lot to do with the general culture of fear that goes on in the right-of-center parts of the United States; everything framed in right-wing narrative about “them” taking something away from “you”; guns, money, religion, “freedom”, whatever. There’s no “us” in the right-wing narrative without a “them” to be in conflict with**; this kind of frame/narrative just feeds the conflict, and I think that’s the biggest impediment to progress.

This is all just me spitballing here; thinking out loud in my little space on the internet, because in a way, that’s what it’s for. There are a lot of problems in this country we need to deal with; I just can’t think of even one that more guns, and unrestricted access to them, makes better or easier to deal with.

____________________________

*- this is the reason why I no longer own any firearms or do anything involving them at all, really. It’s totally personal. If I gun wasn’t nearby, it’s possible (though not assured) that I’d still have someone very important to me in my life; mental disorders like depression suck, even when they’re treated properly (I know); as such, I don’t need those things around, both due to personal distaste, and the potential (if remote) risk involved.

** – I’m kind of curious to see how the right wing frames this one, as the media narrative thus far sets the “radical Islam” and LGBT others against one another. I want to see the mental gymnastics going into how this will fit into their headspace to feed the outrage (because it’s always about feeding the outrage). What I’ve seen thus far is leaving the LGBT out of it for the moment, framing it as an “attack against all of us.”, at least according to the woman arguing with Cokie Roberts this morning on NPR. I’ll have to get the word from Glenn Beck and Brian Fischer later to be sure.

Happy Friday.

Not huge amounts planned for the weekend; usual home stuff (laundry, cooking, etc), farming for some anniverary cakes on Marvel Heroes (I’m not ashamed), staying out of Richmond until the Dumpster fire leaves town, and maybe continue some nostalgic meditation watching old Bob Ross Joy of Painting episodes on Netflix. Also, having some musical adventures on Saturday that I’m almost ready to seriously start talking about (gigs may be involved); right now it’s knocking together a repertoire and recording a few demos.

Kids are wrapping school – finals next week, but everybody’s pretty much already done; you know how it is. Also, I know how it is, watching these kids enjoying their year-end anticpation and knowing I’ll be keeping the same old schedule, still getting up at the ass-end of the morning all summer, only to have to come home to find evidence of three more people (on average – there will be activities that that take some of them out of the loop here and there) living in my house all day and probably not cleaning up after themselves…joy.

Oh well; on the bright side, my little chemistry set tells me that the ammonia/nitrate/nitrite levels in the new fish tank are all bang-on zero, so, at least thus far, the tranfer to the larger box is working better than expected. I’ll keep an eye on it for another little while, but everyone looks happy, the moss has fresh growth, and the whole environment looks pretty bad-ass after dark, if I do say so myself:

Anyway, here’s some tunes. I always forget how great a tune #3 is until I hear it, then I fall in love all over again.

1. “First Time” – Vance Joy
2. “It’s the End of the World as we Know It (and I feel fine) – REM
3. “Alex Chilton” – The Replacements
4. “Voices Carry” – ‘Til Tuesday
5. “Heaven When We’re Home” – The Wailin’ Jennys
6. “Ironic” – Alanis Morrissette
7. “West End Girls” – Pet Shop Boys
8. “Such Great Heights” – The Postal Service
9. “Have A Drink on Me” – AC/DC
10. “We Belong” – Pat Benetar

(title references this article, which I found somewhat relevant)

AP stories being premature or not, it’s reasonable after yesterday’s primaries to state that Hillary Clinton will be the nominee for President come next month’s Democratic Party convention in Philadelphia. All signals indicate Sanders will bow out gracefully (after grabbing whatever concessions to his not-insignificant constituency he can for the party platform to keep his movement going) in the next little while, and it’s all over but the dog and pony arena shows.

Looking to the left, you’ll see that this time around, I was a Sanders fan; not really a “BernieBro” (I’ve been through this rodeo more than a few times), but my positions tended to align more with Senator Sanders than with Secretary Clinton. Socially, I’m a liberal progressive, economically, I’m a Keynsian with a taste for classical European socialism. Sanders’ message of economic equality and democratic socialism appeals to me; I’m always going to be a bit to the left of the average candidate for state or federal office in this country, and the Sanders campaign hit a lot of my sweet spots in that regard.

I also have few issues with Clinton’s policy positions, since, for the most part, she and Sanders agree, even if Sanders wants to move farther and faster on them, and comparatively, Clinton’s a little more hawkish in terms of foreign policy than I’d like. By all rights, she’s been a pretty good public servant the last couple of decades, appears to have the ability to navigate the public sector ably and compromise where it matters, and I expect she’d be completely competent executive, both on her own merits, and the fact that she spent eight years as an active First Lady means that other than an incumbent running for re-election, she’s got the most real-world exposure to what the actual job of “President” actually looks like, and would probably require much less of a learning curve than just about anyone.

That said, although I’m going to vote for her, and she’ll be a perfectly acceptable (and historically significant) candidate and likely eventual President (probably not all that far off from Obama, especially if she continues to take the Sanders message to heart and incorporate it into hers), I’m having a hard time getting excited.

For me, it’s not a woman thing (we’re not going there, Madeline Albright); I’d love for our country to catch up with the rest of the world’s advanced democracies and elect someone without a Y chromosome), it’s a dynasty thing. For the last 28 years (nearly 3/4 of my life now), there’s only been eight years there where the White House wasn’t occupied by a Bush or a Clinton. I’m a little uncomfortable with that.

Also (and this might be a personal flaw on my part), I’m somewhat tepid toward Secretary Clinton personally. I get that it’s a historic event, and policy-wise, she’s just fine. I also understand that she’s not in the same league charismatically that her husband or the current President; and heck, for someone else, she might be. I do my best to put this aside, but I struggle with the stock “Boomer career woman/power grandma” persona she exemplifies, and amplifies when she’s on the stump. Again, I understand and recognize the introvert overcompensation; however, this outward image she’s presenting doesn’t elicit the greatest reaction from me; I’ve been burned a time or two. Like I said, it’s a personal problem for me, one that I’m doing my best to set aside. I don’t relate well to her; personally, I have a hell of a lot more in common with the slightly grumpy but cool grandpa figure.

I guess I kind of get the “candidate I’d rather have a beer with” appeal of W to certain folks. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to vote my head.

It’s time for pragmatism, and Clinton is a perfectly fine candidate to align with my political philosophies (I don’t think a Hillary Clinton presidencey will look dramatically different content-wise than an Obama presidency), and is certainly a better alternative to the Trump Tire Fire. Like I said a couple of times now, the primaries are the time to pick the option you love; the general is where you kind of, by design, have to pick the lesser of two evils. If that lesser evil is someone you can get truly excited about, that’s great, but experience tells us it’s not going to happen all that often.

The best reason I can give for why I’ll vote for Secretary Clinton in the general election is a pragmatic one; that’s what general elections are for. I found myself thinking about this while listening to Tuesday’s edition of NPR’s Fresh Air, which featured an interview with author Jeffrey Rosen talking about his new book about Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (which you should all listen to at the link above; fascinating stuff), and include this bit (quoting Rosen) regarding the importance of the Court when considering one’s vote in November:

It’s impossible to understate the relevance of the Supreme Court in this election. Citizens should vote for the presidential candidate who most coincides with their vision of the Constitution because even the confirmation of a single justice, even just Merrick Garland’s confirmation would transform the law in a series of areas from campaign finance to affirmative action to voting rights and more in a way that will affect the court for decades to come.

So people have been talking about the Court in the election for a longtime. This time, it’s happening. Vote for the candidate whose view of the Constitution coincides with your own.

That’s where we are; the Court is currently a Justice short, with the others basically lining up 4-4. Congress has said repeatedly that they’re not going to even consider the nomination of Merrick Garland until after the election. Whether the next appointee ends up being Garland or someone else (Congressional leadership will have its own pragmatic decision to make come the first Wednesday in November), that appointment is likely going to be instrumental in setting which way the court’s going to lean for the next couple of decades.

You know, that’s enough for me.

If you’re new to this space, you know that one of my less-weird hobbies is keeping freshwater tropical fish and live plants. For most of the last decade, I’ve been running basically the same 29 gallon aquarium. It’s served nicely, although it’s gotten a little long in the tooth; I’ve been replacing pieces slowly over the last year – the original light crapped out, so I got a nice Fluval LED rig; the original plastic lid broke, so I got a nice glass one. Last week, one of the cats jumped on top and cracked the inner rim of the top of the frame, almost falling in (hilariously), testing the waterproofing of the lighting rig, and requiring a hasty repair involving “duct tape keeping the roof from falling in.” It was time for a new glass box.

Having a nicely sized wooden stand/cabinet for the aquarium, I didn’t want to give that up, but figured if I was replacing it, I might as well go bigger. I found the biggest 30×12 footprint tank I could, a 37 gallon tall; it would fit the hole, and add the extra volume in height. Not the most common tank, but easily procurable online. I spent the weekend down at the con checking the shipping status, and hoping beyond hope that I wouldn’t end up with a big box full of shards of glass.

Luckily, it arrived Monday night in one piece (with lots of bubble wrap). I’d procured a couple of odds and ends in the meantime – new substrate (a nice coarse sand in black), and some neat, cheap, low-tech decor items; a couple of terra cotta flower pots, and a few two dollar acrylic suction cup soap dishes with drain holes, with an eye toward filling the vertical space with multi-level aquascaping.

After work today, I spent several hours draining, moving, filling, re-arranging, netting, and all that, and you can see the result below:

I like it; it’s cleaner than the old one; I hope it stays that way; I think the added depth to the tank will help diffuse the light a bit, keeping the plants going but avoiding much of the algae. I’m in love with the substrate (sand! so much more natural that gravel), and if the java moss grows the way I hope it does from the little racks, I think it’ll look really cool as time goes on.

For you aquaria purists, I expect it’ll cycle just fine – that driftwood is straight out of the old tank (I just yanked some of the moss off it), as are the river rocks; those flowerpots with the java ferns and aponogetons are full of the old gravel; likewise, all the plants (save those new java ferns) went in without a rinse. Also, I just moved the well-seasoned filter directly over and will run it for a couple of weeks and monitor levels; the population right now is pretty small – a small school (10?) of black neon tetras, two bristle-nose plecostomus (the ones that only get about four inches long), two old black mollies, and a few amano shrimp and nerite snails.

Anyway, gaze upon it’s greatness. I just wanted to show it off.

As indicated previously, I spent the weekend doing the music thing with the Humdingers at ConCarolinas this weekend. We had some good, well-attended shows, though we tend to get shunted to the “filk” track at this one, so we never really got the main stage with the awesome sound guys (hey, Keith, John and Gene!) except for a Saturday morning round-robin performance with a couple of other acts. Oh well, we rocked that small room (there were more people here than might appear in the photo, trust me):

As is always the case with these things, we never get enough of a chance to hit everything we want to do and see everyone we want to see (I would’ve liked to spend more time with our friends Mikey Mason and Valentine Wolfe, though we all got a little time to check in and goof off, and I caught a bit of each of their performances over the course of the weekend (the whole pack of them did a great performance together of VW’s “Annabelle Lee” that was amazing to behold), and Mikey (as well as Metricula) joined us for an impromptu performance in front of the “Buskerville” sign in the hallway on Sunday – there are bits of it out there on Instagram, at least – go check it out!

Oh, and Mikey inducted me into the new Hogwarts house, SlitherClawPuffledor, and I got kicked out of the band about a dozen times due to infractions ranging from playing in a different key (notice I didn’t say wrong key!) to having been into Bon Jovi in high school. No worries, Scott will always keep crawling back, as long as I keep learning Jethro Tull tunes.

Additionally, we got see and play with a bunch of other great performers, including Moss Bliss (check out the song “Scale” at the link…amazing), Larry Kirby, White Plectrum, Frank Parker (who wrote one of our favorite songs to play, “Night of the Hunt”, which we finally got to play for him), Gray Reinhart, and at least a little bit of one set from a really great band you should look into, This Way to the Egress (two words – headbanging tuba).

Now that namedropping and promotion is out of the way…

So, it was a successful con, I guess – again, I was kind of struggling the week heading into the con (I’m juggling lots of stuff, between work, dance dad stuff, this musical project, and another one I’m contributing to/mentoring/producing/whatever it is I do), I was *tired*. In spite of this, I was very, very happy with the way we performed, and the new acoustic bass I picked up cheap last weekend (walked into guitar center for picks, came out with a used Rogue acoustic/electric for 50 bucks…and picks) worked out well. I did end up taking a full-on nap on Saturday afternoon to try and keep pace.

If I look back, I think I was kind of worn out after this con last year as well, though things don’t feel as bleak as they did a year ago. Maybe it’s just something about this time of year (I think it is, actually…), but I’m just a bit glum; though I’d probably be worse if I didn’t find myself in the companionable company of such welcoming and talented people; this sort of music thing is my therapy, and it works.

When you can close out a busy weekend by sitting around in a circle with a bunch of talented people singing songs and telling stories, life could be a hell of a lot worse.

…because it seems appropriate, here’s my friend Gray’s ode to the post-con state of mind, “Dead Dog Party”:

Once again, we’re featured guests at ConCarolinas; as expressed in the above poster, our big shows are Friday and Saturday at 8pm, plus we’ll be involved with everything with the word “filk” in it, and will probably make some noise otherwise besides.

come on out!

…and while you’re at it, check out the rest of the bill, including our friends Mikey Mason and Valentine Wolfe!

….and If you happen to be at the other end of the mid-atlantic, I have a bunch of creator friends exhibiting at Awesome-Con in DC. You might want to check out a certain music panel at 8pm on Friday, where you’re likely to meet some other musical co-conspirators of mine….hmmmm

In case I haven’t mentioned it before (I’m pretty sure I have), Top Gear is very popular in the TV rotation in my house; it’s a fun and entertaining programme, and the case can be made that it’s educational, at least a little bit. it’s a car show that appeals across the board to more than just car people (although I’m kind of a car guy); everybody in my family loves it, perhaps for different reasons, but there’s something for everyone. If you haven’t seen it, it has a lot in common with shows like Mythbusters; it’s a show about a particular, occasionally esoteric topic, but presented in a way that’s enjoyable and accessible, largely because of the personalities involved. though this one’s a bit more British, in all the right ways.

The new Top Gear hit the airwaves this weekend, after a bunch of controversy after the original* team left after Jeremy Clarkson’s temper issues, and ended up with their own forthcoming car show on Amazon Prime. It’s not to hard to go dig into the history or that kerfuffle if you’re interested.

As for the new Top Gear: it was…okay?

Much was made about this new version of Top Gear, particularly lots of opinions about the bunches of hosts they announced. Most of these hosts, of course, got sidelined to online post-shows (which are arguably very good), or limited appearances.

Staffing the re-dressed airplane hangar studio were BBC radio knob, Ferarri collector,and former Mr. Billie Piper(!) Chris Evans, and Friends‘ former Doctor Drake Ramoray, Matt LeBlanc, who’s had some success on British TV of late, and showed himself to be a real car guy on appearances on the previous version of TG.

The show itself was a little rusty, in a not-unexpected pilot sort of way. Evans, who has been the subject of lots of tabloid drama regarding the production of the show, really felt like he was trying too hard. Almost every review has commented about his shouty-ness, which, as I’m to understand, is basically his schtick as a presenter (along with his ego). I wasn’t a huge fan, though we’ll see how further things work out in future episodes.

LeBlanc, however, was a lot of fun; studio chemistry with Evans was a little shakey, though he brought the game for the filmed segments (though the whole Robin Rialto road-trip film was probably not the best lead-off), especially his solo piece on the Ariel Nomad, which played to his strengths; he’s got a laid-back, easy charm that makes him easy to root for, and you can tell that he really enjoys the cars (I didn’t quite get this from Evans, either here or when he appeared on the old show), and that enthusiasm for the material goes a long way toward making the show work.

I liked the little bit I saw of Sabine Schmitz, one of the other “hosts”, in the “Top Gun” filmed bit – she’s a great driver and a weirdly oddball personality; and her slagging the suspension on the Corvette Z06 as “shit, like a Ferarri”, was just what I’d expect from her – I want more.

Star in a reasonably priced car was interesting; I like the change to a Mini running a rallycross course in theory, though both Evans’ interview piece and the duds of “stars” (this week, Gordon Ramsay and Jesse Eisenberg) were pretty awful. I hope it gets better.

I heard Extra Gear was pretty good, though I haven’t seen it yet. It seems to make the gearheads on Jalopnik happy; I’ll check it out one of these days. It’s supposed to have a little less spectacle and a little more “car show” going for it.

In the end, it was good enough for a pilot, but still needs some work to live up to it’s potential. I tend to go with the majority opinion that the show needs less Evans, and more of the other folks (hopefully the BBC will absorb some lessons from the responses the show’s gotten). I really want to like it (and I think I do, overall), but I want to see a little more personality and information, and a little less spastic.

To give you an idea where I’m coming from (and to finally throw in a more direct comparison to the old show’s personalities) with my personal tastes for this sort of thing, I ended up watching a couple of episodes each of some of the side-projects that the former Top Gear hosts have done over the years this weekend in between backyard bbqs and rain – James May’s cars of the people, and Richard Hammond’s Crash Course.

May’s show was a clever, witty exploration of how cars became such an itegral part of human life. It worked in bits of history, culture, sociology, plenty of behind-the-wheel reactions to various influential vehicles, and it was funny. I adored it. Hammond’s show was about Richard Hammond blowing crap up with heavy equipment, and was shot like an awful american realtity show. I was less enthused. Hammond’s a charismatic little imp, and I generally like him, but the packaging of this show wasn’t great.

For me, if TG is going to improve, give me a little more of the things that made May’s show work, and a little less of the other one.

For those not in the know, in the current arc of the new Steve Rogers: Captain America comic (which hit comic shops yesterday), it’s been shockingly revealed that …Cap’s been a HYDRA Agent all along!.

Thanks to a full-court press by Marvel Executive Editor/Senior VP of Publishing Tom Brevoort, a nice chunk of the mainstream media latched on to this “revelation” as some amazing earth-shattering status-quo-breaking event, and has people on social media crapping themselves and ranting and raving about it everywhere.

Just like Marvel hoped they would.

As a fan, I understand that people get attached to these characters, especially recently, given the great performance Chris Evans has given as Steve Rogers for a bunch of big movies now. Captain America, today, just as he was back when Jack Kirby and Joe Simon thought him up back in the Timely days, is a symbol a lot of people, even non-comics fans, respond to, and often attach their own ideals to.

I also understand that comics is a business, and that Marvel’s modus operandi since Stan and Jack started the bullpen is to hype the hell out of things, promise that things are NEVER GOING TO BE THE SAME, and aren’t above a little misdirection (or occasionally flat-out making things up) to get the attention of the reader.

This is the first issue of a new story arc, which will likely run a solid six to twelve issues, before having the twist revealed and will settle out as being not all that different than they way they were before. Comics run on the illusion of change; it’s all part of the relationship fans and creators have.

I see a lot of this in the marketing here. Writer Nick Spencer’s definitely got an angle; this quote below from the EW piece that broke all this nonsense yesterday is right out of the Stan Lee playbook:

Issue 2 will lay a lot of our cards on the table in terms of what the new status quo is, but the one thing we can say unequivocally is: This is not a clone, not an imposter, not mind control, not someone else acting through Steve. This really is Steve Rogers, Captain America himself.

…a comics guy brings out “unequivocally” and lists a bunch of conditions, get out your shovel, because somebody’s getting snowed. This list of conditions is broad, but also oddly specific; there’s a lot of room for all kinds of other technicalities, which is what has always happened.

Especially in a comics universe that has, in the past year, been destroyed and rebuilt in a new image thanks to the “Secret Wars” event, for which the new “status quo” is still being determined (though it won’t be all that different in the end, except Miles Morales gets to be Spider-Man as well), and has, in the last ten years, has had the Captain America mantle held by three different people (there are currently two Caps running around), has had Steve Rogers killed and resurrected, and for the last couple of years, Steve Rogers has been a depowered old man who recently got his Super-Soldier powers and his youth back thanks to a Cosmic Cube, which has, traditionally, been the biggest macguffin in a sea of macguffins the Marvel Universe has created.

In my mind, it’s also not a coincidence that this happened when it did, mid-way through the first week since release that the Captain America: Civil War blockbuster film hasn’t topped the box office, and on the same day when DC comics rolls out it’s latest universe-shattering event, Rebirth, which changes the status quo over there again, ahead of the usual 7-10 year schedule they’ve maintained since Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Can the average non-comic fan person in America tell you what the #1 movie in America is this week? Probably not. Can they tell you what’s going on over at Marvel’s Distinguished Competition? Nope. But they sure as hell know that Captain America is, for the moment, a life-long HYDRA agent. And they have a strong, uninformed opinion on it.

Marvel wins the cycle. Boom.

And Marvel and parent company Disney don’t really care that much about individual comic book sales; they haven’t for years, really. The comics haven’t been the profit leaders for decades. Since the 90s, it’s been licensing the IP for movies, tv, and merchandise. A HUGE comic in today’s market sells *maybe* 100,000 copies. That pales in comparison to the revenue the Marvel movies and licensed merchandise bring in.

Something like this gets the IP on the minds of people, who might, as a result, go see Civil War again, buy a t-shirt, or go into a comic shop out of curiousity, and if not buy the offending issue, might buy one of the high-profit margin reprint omnibus editions of “classic” Cap stories. Just like when they announced that Thor was now a girl, or that Doctor Octopus took over Spider-Man’s body, or back in the 70s, when Cap found out that Richard Nixon was leader of the Secret Empire, and gave up the shield in disgust and when on a road trip across america to find himself as Nomad, Man Without A Country. All those stories ended (or are in the process of ending) with the status quo going back to the way it was, and usually resulting in a pretty cool story when all was said and done.

Don’t worry, ginned up fans of Captain America who have your red-white-and-blue panties in a twist about Marvel betraying their beloved character; it’ll all work out. Listen to the Washington Post, they understand.

Cap didn’t stay a werewolf, did he?