I Am The Fringe

Editor's note: NOT A MOVIE ENTRY, although it will mention a media conglomerate most heavily associated with films.

Yep, it's true.  I am in league with those people who believe that Dark Side of the Moon lines up with The Wizard of Oz if you start the record at the third MGM lion roar or whatever.  (I've never tried it, but I'm sure it would be fascinating if I could stand to listen to Pink Floyd for longer than 20 seconds.)
Which I'm pretty sure is not news to you guys, but it has come to my attention recently because I was listening to the song "Tragic Kingdom" by No Doubt the other morning and had a ZOMGEPIPHANY about it.  The CD it comes from, also called Tragic Kingdom, was one of the first CDs I ever owned.  When I was 12, it rotated through my CD player in between SpiceWorld and the soundtrack to Hercules.  And I always used to think that the song "Tragic Kingdom" was just a fancy theatrical venture on an album that is otherwise Gwen Stefani's various post-breakup hate letters to her ex.  And I suppose, if you were coming into it from a heavily metaphorical perspective, "Tragic Kingdom" could be read as a metaphor for the end of their relationship.  I didn't ever think this, though; I just thought it was a big fanciful story about a ruined medieval kingdom.

Before I delve into my epiphany, allow me to post the song and the lyrics for your consideration:

Once was a magical place
Over time it was lost
Price increased the cost
Now the fortune of the kingdom
Is locked up in its dungeon vaults
The castle floor lies in traps
With coiled wires set back
Decoyed by old cheese
Now the drawbridge has been lifted
As the millions
They drop to their knees
They pay homage to a king
Whose dreams are buried
In their minds
His tears are frozen stiff
Icicles drip from his eyes

The cold wind blows as it snows
On those who fight to get in
On heads that are small
Disillusioned as they enter
They're unaware what's
Behind castle walls
But now it's written in stone
The king has been overthrown
By jesterly fools
And the power of the people
Shall come to believe they do rule

They pay homage to a king
Whose dreams are buried
In their minds
His tears are frozen stiff
Icicles drip from his eyes
Welcome to the tragic kingdom
Cornfields of popcorn
Have yet to spring open

Have they lost their heads
Or are they just all blind mice
We've heard all their stories
One too many times
Hypnotized by fireflies
They glow in the dark
Midgets that disguise themselves
As tiny little dwarfs
The parade that's electrical
It serves no real purpose
Just takes up a lot of juice
Just to impress us

They pay homage to a king
Whose dreams are buried
In their minds
His tears are frozen stiff
Icicles drip from his eyes

Oh, they drip from his eyes
Into the night
They drip from his eyes

Welcome to the tragic kingdom
Cornfields of popcorn
Have yet to spring open

So that's the song.  (Bugs me that Gwen doesn't know how to pronounce "homage.")  And I have to confess - I had my little epiphany about it, then went online and realized that the epiphany wasn't entirely mine and wasn't entirely secret, although Professor Wikipedia does not dig as deeply into it as I did because, as I may have mentioned, I am the fringe.

Yep, finally realized after, oh, 13 years of listening to the song, that "Tragic Kingdom" rhymes with "Magic Kingdom."  As in Disney.  And Disneyland is in Anaheim, where No Doubt was born and bred.  As the Wikipedia link I provided shows, that observation is not my crazy imagination reaching - that was an intentional pun by the band.  The rest of my observations, however....

Y'all, I want you to realize that I feel appropriately ashamed that I initiated several mental synapses listening to the lyrics and realizing all the different ways that they could be taken as Disney references.  But of course, my shame over being a lunatic will not prevent me from re-copying the lyrics and pointing out all those places to you!  Because it's my blog and I do what I want!  So you'll see the lyrics in italics, and my super profound and not-at-all-awkwardly-crazy thoughts will appear in bold.



Once was a magical place
Over time it was lost
Price increased the cost
Commentary on the growing commercialism/merchandising hype that took hold not only of Disney, but of all the big movie machines?  I think so!
Now the fortune of the kingdom
Is locked up in its dungeon vaults
Disney vault.  Where they hide the really popular and well-made Disney films until they need to make more money or until a new format gets released.  *coughLIONKINGIN3Dcough*
The castle floor lies in traps
With coiled wires set back
Decoyed by old cheese
I always thought this line was weird, and still do, unless cheese = mouse.  Hmm.
Now the drawbridge has been lifted
As the millions
They drop to their knees
They pay homage to a king
Whose dreams are buried
In their minds
The great and powerful aspirations of WALT hang heavy over us all.
His tears are frozen stiff
Icicles drip from his eyes.
Possible reference to the urban legend that Walt was cryogenically frozen when he died.  (In reality, quite the opposite - he was cremated.)
The cold wind blows as it snows
On those who fight to get in
On heads that are small
Disillusioned as they enter
They're unaware what's
Behind castle walls
Hm.  Don Bluth saw what was behind castle walls and got disillusioned.  Just saying.
But now it's written in stone
The king has been overthrown
By jesterly fools
Comment on the failure of post-Walt head honchos to ignite the same magic and innovation he did?  Possibly.
And the power of the people
Shall come to believe they do rule
[snipped because of repeated lyrics]
Welcome to the tragic kingdom
Cornfields of popcorn
Popcorn = theme parks and movies.  HMMMM.
Have yet to spring open

Have they lost their heads
Or are they just all blind mice
MICE
We've heard all the stories
One too many times
Disney's standard formula, especially in the beginning: take existing stories, like novels and fairy tales (especially those in the public domain) and adapt for film.
Hypnotized by fireflies
They glow in the darkHow much Disney magic is made to look like little fireflies?  Think of Tinkerbell's magic, the Fantasia fairies, the Fairy Godmother's magic in Cinderella...
Midgets that disguise themselves
As tiny little dwarfs
Dwarfs.  Yeah.  First feature-length animated film the House of Mouse ever made.
The parade that's electrical
It serves no real purpose
Just takes up a lot of juice
Just to impress us
Main Street Electrical Parade.  Obvy.
[remainder snipped because of repeated lyrics]

So these were the very important and relevant thoughts my brain was producing when I was doing my dance-workout and trying not to be freaked out about my upcoming concert.  Left with a dose of nervousness-adrenaline and nothing to focus it on, my mind goes to some pretty interesting places.  Of course, as regular readers will note, my mind goes to interesting places whether I am guiding it or not.  But it's entertaining, right? 

I Am Straight-To-Video Movies, and So Can You!

Yes, I do remember that I have a blog.  I'm one month into a new job and this is the first chance I've had to really write much of anything in a long time.  And whadaya know, it's another movie post!

To the surprise of no one, I come from a family of avid film watchers.  And of course, the big names can only sustain the film watcher's appetite for so long, especially the child film watcher.  So I thought I'd take you on a little tour of some of the lesser-known (or completely unknown) film gems Amber and I enjoyed as kids.  And before you are tempted to complain, please note the absence of such adjectives as "quality", "engaging", "good" and suchlike.
As an aside: some of the samples from YouTube are going to be the first 10 minutes of the film.  Most of them aren't popular enough for YouTubers to be all "Here's the big musical number!" or "Here's the scary part!"  There's only "Movie Name: Part 1" or "Entire Dadgum Movie."  Sorry about that.

1. The Jungle King
A teeny tiny straight-to-video little number that recycles an old chestnut about twins..."They look the same, but they are different!  I wonder if they will learn something from each other?"  It's hilarious to watch this snippet as an adult and to notice just how heavily the layouts, set designs and characterizations borrow pretty heavily from other popular releases of the time - the Sultan's palace from Aladdin, the interiors reminiscent of the pretty parts of the Beast's castle, and of course, some pretty blatant borrowing from Lion King, which, shocker of shockers, came out the same year.  Kinda reminds you of the recent swarm of mediocre vampire entertainments that have cropped up in response to the popularity of Twilight.

2. Little Nemo - Adventures in Slumberland
A Japanese film that, for lots of kids my age who weren't counter-culture enough to be into comics and graphic novels and not old enough to watch the grown-up stuff being offered on MTV, was an introduction to anime.  And if you have a look at the credits, you'll notice that Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, which lots of us had to read in high school, and All Summer In A Day, which I'm beginning to think only I ever read) contributed to the film. 

3. Happily Ever After
Happily Ever After pioneered the use of big-name celebrities as voice actors to bring some buzz to a film.  In want of the big funding and marketing that the bigger companies had, the fine folks at Filmation stacked their cast with stars from lots of different media - Ed Asner, Carol Channing, Irene Cara, Phyllis Diller (whose big musical number you may remember from my movie musicals essential soundtrack) et al.  Didn't help much, seeing as how Filmation filed bankruptcy and folded shortly thereafter.  Happily Ever After is an unofficial sequel to Snow White, featuring seven dwarfelles who are endowed with supernatural power over different elements.  Little Thunderella (Tracey Ullman), though, is in a bind over hers...

4. The Magic Voyage
Another foreign film that got re-vamped and released stateside, this time from our friends in Germany.  It uses a fictionalized version of Christopher Columbus's journey to "India" (until that whole other continent got in the way) as a frame story alongside which a little woodworm named Pico goes to save his lady love, a fairy named Marilyn.  Hilariously enough, this one also cast a bunch of big names, including Irene Cara.  I suppose she thought this was her film niche!  In this clip, we find Columbus trying to stave off a mutiny by inciting accordion merriment.  (If it works for Weird Al...)  Have a listen to these words and tell me whether you think that the studio blew all their money on the voice cast and as a result got the cheapest lyricist available...

5. Rumpelstilzkin as presented by Timeless Tales from Hallmark
This is what the Hallmark movie people were doing before they were making the Hallmark movies we know so well today...taking the gloriously public domain Grimm fairy tales and animating them with the help of Hanna-Barbera (the fine folks behind the Flintstones, Jetsons, Smurfs and other such television gems.)  And heeey, Sandy from Grease is telling us all about what we'll be watching today!  Enjoy the first few minutes, and also have a good laugh at the clothing on the live-action frame story actors...are you surprised to know that this was made in 1990?

6. Beauty and the Beast (1981 Bosustow Entertainment version)
Ladies and germs, I have stumped the internet.  Aside from that IMDB link and a link to a site that looks less than reliable (some weird little cartoon database), I can't find a blessed thing about this movie anywhere.  No stills, no cover art, no nothing.  And I went through a whole bunch of digging, because you can imagine what I am inundated with when I Google anything close to that title...  I looked through all of IMDB's listings for "Beauty and the Beast" (of which there were roughly eight zillion) and this is my best guess for the right one; I can't confirm at the moment because the videotape is at my mother's house.  And y'all, I was REALLY wanting to share this one with you, because it is singularly freaky.  On the upside, if I've got the right title, IMDB tells me that it's only 12 minutes long, a length of time easily recorded on small electronic devices.  This may call for a trip to Mom's tomorrow for a Copyright Infringement Kooky Film Recovery Mission!


7. Daffy Duck's Quackbusters
This is probably the most well-known of my collection here, largely because it used an already-famous group of characters.  It even got re-released on DVD.  As a child, I noted with some confusion the fact that the backgrounds, animation style, and character voices changed so frequently in this film; it's because much of the film is pulled from different Looney Tunes cartoons, with the only newly animated sequences being those that feature Daffy as a paranormalist.  Fun fact: Mel Blanc served as the voice of most of the Looney Tunes characters for decades.  This film was his last one in the Tunes canon - he died a year later.  Between Blanc voicing the characters for the new animation that served as the frame story and Blanc having voiced the 1950s and 1960s cartoons they pulled for filler, he comes close to being the exclusive voice actor for the entire movie.  Very interesting to watch the parts where the newer animation segues into the old cartoons and hear his 80-year-old voice change into his 50-something voice, most noticeably on Porky.  But I can't show you any of that, because the Powers That Be have kept a close eye on the YouTubes for stray copyrighted material.  As far as Quackbusters goes, I can only offer you this:

8. A Variety Of Films That Were Basically Books-On-Tape
Because these examples come from popular franchises, you may question why I include them in a post on obscure movies.  But one look at the "animation" style ("Let's just point the camera at the book, pan around and then mess with a few of the cels to make some stuff wiggle or disappear!") and you'll see why I don't really consider these proper movies.  The first example in particular makes my mother all misty-eyed because I watched it and talked with her about it as a toddler.

This has been a fun ride...stay tuned to see if I'm ever able to dig up the missing one!

Y'guys

I know I am the worst blogger on The Planet.  I've been busy these days.  There are lots of little nuggets in my brain to talk about, such as:

1. Folks who refer to my male colleagues as "sir" and me as "honey" and only shake the hands of my male colleagues but think it's cool to put a hand on my shoulder.

2. Clothing that looks totally legit on some women, but indecent on me.  Girls: you know what I mean.  UNFAIR.

3. Punditry and the rash of ideological morons (or sellouts to sensationalism) who feel the urge to reduce every situation or issue down to a false cartoonish good people - bad people dichotomy and ignore the vast majority of responses and needs (which have the added characteristic of actually existing in real life) in between.

4. Coffee, you guys.  COFFEE.

5. Southern Social Exercises: What We Say and What We Mean.

6. Public personalities and the blurring line between what you produce being a commodity and your person/existence being a commodity.

7. Reclaiming My Face: Actively Trying To Leave The House Sans Makeup And Not Care

These may or may not be expanded in some way.  We'll see.  In the meantime, enjoy the new widget to the right of this here text that shows you what all I've shared on Google Buzz!

The Venture Brothers - My Crazy Fandom

Following is an overview of the Adult Swim cartoon The Venture Brothers and, I think, compelling evidence as to why you, Friend of Mine, would very much enjoy it. 
Assuming, of course, that you are a qualified member of the mature audience for whom Adult Swim programming is intended - generally, 14 and up is the recommended age group.  Blah blah disclaimer blah blah bleeped cussing and grown-up themes blah not a great idea for kids, ok?

The Venture Brothers is part homage, part parody, hearkening back to the cartoon heroes of earlier days, especially those of Hanna-Barbera fame.  It tells the story of the "next generation" of good guys and bad guys and the spectacular failure of both to live up to the excellence of their predecessors.

First of all, like much of Adult Swim's lineup, the cartoon operates on multiple levels.  There's the superficiality of impossibly strong men, impossibly shaped women, big fights with big weapons.
But the dialogue.
The dialogue.
Ye who love pop culture references, prepare to drown.  They are numerous and snappy and you pretty much have to watch multiple times to catch them all.  It's the type of quick verbal humor that plays on collective cultural knowledge subtly - the kind that almost always prompts a delayed reaction, as you find yourself finally giggling over a joke about two jokes later in the conversation.  And when it isn't giving you pause when you hear Brock referred to as "Agent Topanga Lawrence," it pleases the ear with peculiar lines that are funny just for their weirdness.
"I like the cut of his jib."
"I like the cut of his hair."
Cardholder said one, Doe said the other...not really sure which is which.

And the characters!  The awesome juxtaposition of old-style pro- and antagonists with a more corporatized, bureaucratic present-day is BRILLIANT.  Marvel as I describe to you...

1. The Guild of Calamitous Intent
Often referred to simply as "The Guild," this is the largest and most prominent organization for villains within the Ventureverse.  Other such organizations exist - the Canada-based Peril Partnership is mentioned and The Revenge Society is founded by a Guild excommunicant - but the Guild is the forerunner in organized villainy, featuring a legislative/judicial body called the Council of 13 and headed by the Sovereign.  And like any entity that big, the Guild is awash in rules, forms, treaties and general legalism.  "Arching," a verb taken from the "archenemy" noun, is a fully regulated job.  Villains are assigned protagonists to arch and, while they attempt to partake in classic activities such as destroying the protagonist's home with lasers or killing the protagonist by slowly dipping him/her into a large cauldron of lava, there are limits to their abilities.  Case in point: Dr. Venture being able to stop his enemy, The Monarch, in mid-arch because of a doctor's appointment.  Basically, the overriding rules and regulations have made archvillainy a non-threatening, mundane job much like any other except that it involves thematic dress and accommodations.  For protags like Dr. Venture, the presence of an archvillain holds no fear or terror, but rather annoyance.

2. The Office of Secret Intelligence
When Dr. Venture's recently-freed twin, Jonas Jr., inquires with the Guild as to whom protects the "good guys," Watch and Ward condescendingly point him to the OSI.  Back in the day, the OSI searched for evidence of the Guild when it acted more in its intended vein: as a genuinely dangerous, secret band of vengeful aggressors.  Now, with so many treaties between the two and so much common knowledge and, in some cases, common members, the two organizations bluster at one another while committing few acts of...well, action!  The OSI, like the Guild, has become too big and too legalistic to be truly effective at much, although the true rough riders like Gen. Treister occasionally bust some heads and protect some justice.

Those are the big guys, supposedly pitted against each other.  Neither is nimble enough to cause any real problems, in the case of the former, or solve any real problems, in the case of the latter.  The real danger and intrigue come from defectors of both organizations (like "Revenge," whose name changes rival PuffPDaddyDiddyDirtyMoneyWhatever, and Col. Gathers) who tire of the sluggishness of the big names and strike out on their own.

And of course, there's the concept of the shifting or split identity.  Which, y'all know, fascinates me.
Yes ma'am I DID just link to my own blog, I am that narcissistic.
So many people in this show go through different stages, names, missions or pursue a life that diverges significantly from their strengths.

Behold the changes...

Sheila, the student --> Lady Au Pair, the beginner Guild villain --> Queen Etherea, Phantom Limb's second-in-command and girlfriend --> Dr. Girlfriend, The Monarch's second-in-command and girlfriend --> Queen Etherea again for a hot second --> Dr. Mrs. The Monarch, The Monarch's partner and wife.

Prof. Hamilton G. Fantomos, teacher --> Phantom Limb (after an accident), Guild-associated villain --> Revenge, founder of Guild-opposed Revenge Society.

Malcolm, orphaned trust fund baby and student --> Shadowman 9, Phantom Limb's henchman --> Henchman for several other Guild villains, including Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Nightmare Coat --> The Monarch, Guild-associated villain.

Brock Samson, college football player --> Special Agent Samson, OSI --> Agent Samson, SPHINX

Hunter Gathers, male OSI colonel and mentor to Brock --> Hunter Gathers, ousted and marked for death by the OSI and, oh yeah, female --> Blackheart Double Agent (still female) --> Col. Hunter Gathers, Director of SPHINX and male again

And then there's Doctor Rusty Venture.

Or, should I say, "Doctor" Rusty Venture.

Even though the show is named after his twin sons, the show is a portrait of the unaddressed trauma, hypocrisy and pain of Doc's life.  Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture is the son of (actual doctorate holder) Dr. Jonas Venture, a towering Alpha Male of a bygone illusory age.  As a globetrotting superscientist and adventurer, Jonas divided his time between building and inventing amazing things and saving the world from the old-school Guild, back when it was actually something worth worrying about.  Little Rusty faced a classic rock and hard place: to be acknowledged and included in his dad's life meant being in constant danger, frequently kidnapped and often witnessing violence and debauchery, but to eschew this life was to be ignored by his father entirely, as the man was almost never home and when he was, cared little for Rusty.  Jonas capitalized on Rusty's appeal to his young fans by creating a cartoon show around him, thus solidifying his future as Always Trying To Live Up To The Past, either by scaling his father's shadow or fleeing the mini-scientist he once was that everyone assumed became a superscientist just like Dad.

Nope.  Didn't even finish college.  And isn't a very skilled scientist.  But he wears the "doctor" title and continues to attempt to operate Venture Industries with little success and often by means of questionable legality, like human cloning.  The constant drum of self-hatred grows even louder with the discovery and removal of his previously unknown parasitic twin, Jonas Venture Jr., who manages within months of escaping Rusty's stomach to earn two doctorates, run a successful techno-science empire and generally be the popular, smart son Jonas Sr. always wanted Rusty to be.  And so Rusty continues to struggle under the weight of trying to maintain a corporation he isn't qualified to run, reconciling a childhood he isn't emotionally capable of dealing with and chasing an ideal version of himself laid before him by the rest of the watching world that he knows deep down he will never actually reach.  He'll never even get close.

Ashley, you are way too obsessed with this cartoon.  You are way too obsessed with everything.  How do you even remember this stuff?

I feel like The Venture Brothers captures a feeling we all rather share today.  We look at the ideals of the past and of our predecessors, back when technology was different, work schedules were different, the culture was different, a high school diploma meant something different, and wonder what in the context of our culture will register as analogous.  Which ideals and goals do we form that our parents, our teachers, our mentors believe are ephemeral and stupid when they actually aren't, and which do they set before us that are actually no longer feasible?  And if we chase those infeasible goals based on times past, do we get irretrievably left behind in the wake of PROGRESS?  I hear this question in the grappling of teachers over how many internet sources to allow in research papers when print sources are dwindling fast, in the debates in churches over whether to purchase an acoustic piano that requires expensive maintenance in the name of tradition versus an electronic one with more diverse sound capabilities and in my own mind when I think about the onward march of machines and the interwebz and the future of intellectual property like music and written works.

I feel like this post has transcended the boundaries of what a single post ought to contain.  But it's my blog.  So nah.

The High School, The Sixteen, The Sophomore Year

The real genius behind blogging is that it gives you an opportunity to say to the world, "Does anyone else do this?" and there's a possibility that you'll meet scores of people who do exactly that.

Did you ever get an entire year of your life stuck in your head?   Because as of late, I have had frequent occasion to recall my sophomore year of high school.  I think this is due to several things:
1. The rediscovery and subsequent downloading-to-the-iPod of several tracks from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack.
2. The fact that two pieces from that year's All-State have resurfaced in my life, one in my class and the other in my student's All-State repertoire.
3. The singing of the old songs in worship, many of which I discovered during that year.

It has just occurred to me that those are all music-related points.  Hm.  I've heard that smell is the sense that links to memory the fastest and the most effectively because (paraphrasing from various sources I can't be bothered to cite right now), it goes to the memory part of your brain before going to the part of your brain that says, "What is this?"  But for me, music can put me back in a place as well, especially music that has lain dormant in my brain for a while.  When I snagged the MR soundtrack from Mom's house a few weeks ago and listened to their rendition of "Your Song," I was immediately back in my old bedroom, pacing around, imagining that the young gentleman I was dating at the time was making grand and elaborate romantic gestures.

When I think about tenth grade, it comes in quick little clips.  Standing on the back row in Chorus next to Sara and Ashlyn singing the Pitoni "Cantate Domino.)  Spending hours on AIM with the young gentleman I was dating, only to find him quiet and withdrawn in person (really???  A 16-yr-old boy wasn't just brimming with conversation?)  The pretty girls in Chorus giving me a makeover and Doc informing me that they made me look, erm, meretricious.  Writing up scripts for pretend television shows. 

Sitting in Physical Science making jokes with Jon, starting a friendship of epic proportions.  Listening to soundtracks over and over and over and imagining every dance move, outlining every voice part in my brain.  Writing parodies upon parodies.  Wondering why Coach B had such a great reputation.  Bethany, Rebecca, Ashlyn, Sara, Deanna, Elena, Jenny, Meggie, Jon, Andrew, Stephen, Ryan, Marc, Justin, Curtis.

I dated, got dumped rather spectacularly ("I would date you, but I'm afraid of what people would think of me..."), dated someone else, found him unenthusiastic about the whole thing, dumped him unspectacularly, re-dated him because I thought no one else would ever like me enough to date me, found him downright mean and re-dumped him with what Doc called a "cerebral hate letter."  (Lest I be accused of soiling these unnamed fellows' reputations, I would like to add here that both apologized and more than made up for their conduct and have since been pleasantly civil to me and great suitors to subsequent girlfriends.)

Mostly, I remember that year as being a year of extremes.  I decided to try to eschew sugar one day and found myself eating 6 bowls of HoneyComb the next day.  Boy du Jour would hold my hand for two seconds and I would be over the moon, dancing down the hallways, only to be despondent an hour later when he wouldn't even say hi to me because he was around his friends.  I was desperate for approval (in other news, water is wet) and any little speck, from a good grade on a test to a friend saying I was a good writer sent me skyward, whereas any hint of rejection or disapproval sent me into a self-hate spiral.

Now, what's funny is...I remember it as being one of the best years of my teenagerhood.  It wasn't the happiest year, but it feels like the year I lived the most as a kid, in a manner of speaking.  I ran unabashedly toward what I wanted, exulted to the heavens when I got it and crashed into sorrow when I didn't.  I used to think that songs like "Need You Now" with lines that said "I'd rather hurt than feel nothing at all" didn't make sense because, really, who wants pain?  But my 11th grade year, which was generally a more pleasant year, doesn't feel to me like a better year.  I think back on it and it feels beige.  It feels oatmeal.  Whereas 10th grade is (speaking strictly metaphorically) a series of emotional parties and hangovers.  10th grade is bright colors and big music, poison and panacea, trying to sort out what among my personality traits were to be embraced as me-isms and what were blemishes that needed immediate removal.  As you can imagine, anything that really could be called a personality trait made the latter list, whereas skill traits like verbal intelligence made the former. 

I think the last thing that really made 10th grade the best year was that the full self-control psychosis hadn't descended on me just yet.  Although I was getting close, it wasn't until just after that I extrapolated that having and expressing emotions was bad bad bad because it made me sensitive and sensitive means that I am weak and undeserving of respect or validation until I get that crap under control.  So often when we think back to fun childhood times, we wished we had savored the moment more, worried less, blah blah blah.  But I don't feel that way about 10th grade.  I was in it at full speed the whole time.  It was a great big year.

The Armchair Psychology of Facebook

I read a piece by the stellar Sady Doyle on how everyone is crafting public personas now, thanks to Facebook, Twitter, et al.  What really gets me is the dichotomy of the public persona for people who aren't Snooki or Lady Gaga.  The allure of Twitter and Facebook updates and i-ate-cereal-today (apologies to Kate Harding and Al Iverson) blogs is that by allowing brief blurbs and semi-anonymous ramblings to cross our computers, we're somehow letting more and more of the words that happen in our head happen in public.  Proof: my last Facebook post:

Flash back to, say, 20 or so years ago.  If I had this same PROFOUND THOUGHT (and were still 24 as opposed to 4), I might at most call ACon and tell her about it.  Now?  Just about every acquaintance I have knows that I drank pineapple-flavored Mexican soda today.

The stream of online drivel creates a secondhand intimacy gained by little to no effort.  Before all this connectedness, if you wanted to be a friend close enough to be privy to these little jewels of insanity, you had to (1) meet me in person, (2) do so on a regular basis, (3) demonstrate through these interactions that you are not a jerk, (4) be compatible with me by virtue of shared interests and strengths, and (5) maintain a quid pro quo by revealing more and more of your actual self as I do the same.  It is organic and it takes years.  Nowadays, I have Facebook friends that I've never actually met in person; if we were to meet, that person could come to the table with extensive knowledge of how my brain works.  Like a FastPass to friendship.  The odd thing is, it doesn't seem to work that way for me.  I have a buddy who I knew through other people and good old Facebook before getting to spend any time with her in person.  When I really did get to spend time with her in person, I figured we'd have an easy time of it because we already knew a lot about each other.

...nope.  Still had lots of awkward silences toward the beginning of the conversation, still hunted-and-pecked for topics, still nosed around for that perfect springboard that would send us into meaningful interaction.

And there's the rub: we think that we're getting to know people at a safe distance through text-based communication like Facebook, Twitter and texting, but that very distance and the nature of written composition as opposed to face-to-face speech disconnects the "true" self from the cyberself.  And no matter how open you try to be over these various media, it will always be a different you than the in-person you.  Yes, I know, "the pen must at length comply with the tongue," but it doesn't.  I'm by no means lamenting the presence and influence of social networking--I love being able to see other people's random thoughts and pictures of their pets--I'm just having trouble reconciling the perceived depth of interaction online with the amount of time and effort it takes to achieve that same depth in-person, regardless of whether you "friended" them or not.

And there's no reason I should be having trouble with that concept, because I saw it happen time and again as a dating teenager.  Lemme tell ya, I was all about some AOL Instant Messenger as a teen, because the pressure was off.  I had time to craft my responses and *dazzle* my suitors with such gems as "Banana peels really aren't that slippery at all."  And those gentlemen were afforded the same advantage, which for them typically yielded sentences like, "i guess thats cool."  What happened when we went on a for-reals date?  The same thing that happens on countless for-reals dates...glorious unabashed gaucheitude.  Because the difference between how I state an idea in writing...


"My new phone is more convenient because its charger doubles as a USB cable"

and how I state it in spoken words

"My phone has this thing [flips cover off charging port] and you can, um, use the charger [points to charger] as a USB cord."

are worlds apart.  I had to pretend someone was sitting next to me and say that sentence aloud to even get it right--I can't even approximate my spoken speech on the computer.  There's a simple explanation that lies at the heart of this whole thing:

Typing takes longer than speaking, no matter how fast you type.

So even if you don't want to, even if you're really trying to be as transparent online or in text as possible, you can't really do it convincingly because the sentence springs from your brain fully formed, but morphs and changes as you type.  By the time you get to the halfway point of the sentence, you've probably already forgotten the original way it bounced out of your head.  It's your internal censor, which still operates in you even at your most relaxed and informal--it helps keep your communication coherent.  In speech, this happens when you have pauses in your sentences or use stalling syllables like "um."  You're giving yourself time to figure out how to clearly convey the idea to the listener.  You get the embryo of a thought and your brain starts buzzing, feeding you synonyms for words you aren't sure about using, informing your grammatical structure, and for most of us ladies, connecting it to eighteen other thoughts and images at the same time that you might use to enrich the thought you're in the middle of verbalizing.

The other big factor is that in text-based cyber communication, there are limits.  Not so much in blogs (as evidenced by this here entry), but especially on Twitter and in most Facebook applications.  You have to use verbal  frugality because 140 characters dries up fast.  Which means that those celebrities you're following aren't necessarily giving you a glimpse of their true selves just because they tweet, "I make awesome decisions in bike stores." (Kanye West)

So I guess what I'm trying to say in all this is that Sady is right and that the concept she's illustrating stretches even to those who aren't actively trying to censor their Facebook/Twitter out of career concerns or vanity.  Any text-based communication, open and honest though it may be, will by its very nature be a more polished version of the original speaker.  So when we tell casual acquaintances to Facebook us because we think it will take the awkward out of superficial social interaction, we are wrong.  As soon as we get face-to-face again, we'll return to wherever we were in that organic friend-making process, regardless of text-based interactions.  Which is why all the whining about texting and Facebook turning us into hermits is total crap.  We still need people, and it still takes genuine effort and vulnerability to get people.

Full disclosure: I don't have a Twitter account.  But I do regularly check the Twitter accounts of my favorite writers and celebrities.

Can't Say "Tearjerker" Without "Jerk"

I heard me a song on the way to work the other day.  In the interest of not being libelous, I'm not going to say the title or artist, but suffice to say it's intended to be a heartwarming ditty about a high school sport and the camaraderie and memories and so on forevermore. 

I hate it.

I stocked a book of Christmas music at the store the other day.  The title song is a popular story-song regarding a child's aspiration to buy his mother a particular gift before she meets the Newborn King in person.

I hate it.

There's a certain author of a certain catalogue of books, several of which have been made into movies, that weave syrupy melodramas about lovers who sing, lovers who write letters, lovers who die, lovers who look penetratingly at one another as Chopin plays in the background.

I'm one of those who doesn't believe in hating people, so I don't hate the author.  But I do hate the books and the movies.

I'm pretty particular about my art and entertainment.  I'm not one of those that turns my nose up at anything that isn't classical and highbrow - shoot, I have two Ke$ha songs on my iPod.  Alls I want is for people to be committed to their particular artistic niche and to fullfill it with as much vigor and as little cynicism as possible.  And for me, songs and books like those above are heavy on the cynicism, light on the personal involvement.  They're cash cow works, written to dig at our emotions and earn lots of money for minimal effort.  Might sound harsh, but don't those works follow patterns you've seen all over the place?

Widely Admired Activity or Club + Nostalgia for Teenagerhood + Fortuitous Release Date = HEARTWARMING

Religious Holiday + Childhood Innocence + Possible Death = POIGNANCE

Boy From Wrong Side of Tracks With Heart of Gold + Uncertain or Hard-To-Get Girl + Deep Personal Tragedy + "You Have Changed My Life Forever" = MONEYS, Y'ALL!

The song or script sticks to the usual goalposts, occasionally making pit stops at such gems as "Acoustic Guitar Accompaniment for Intimate Feel" and "Let's Do The Dishes While Dancing Around to 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough.'"  What an insult to our intelligence!  These folks would do well to take some lessons from Fannie Flagg (Fried Green Tomatoes), Robert Harling (Steel Magnolias), and Tanya Tucker ("Two Sparrows in a Hurricane").  Now that's how you do emotional content.