Pixel Scroll 12/27/17 A Very Modest Scroll

(1) SFWA IN TIMES TO COME. Cat Rambo’s yearly recap of all her activities includes a look ahead for SFWA —

  • SFWA’s excellent Executive Director Kate Baker said a few years back, “I want to make the Nebula weekend -the- premiere conference for professional F&SF writers” and I said, “Tell me what you need to do it.” This year’s Nebulas were fantastic; next year’s will be even more, including having Data Guy there to present on the industry, an effort that’s taken a couple of years to get in place.
  • The SFWA Storybundle had its first year and was wildly successful, as was the Nebula-focused HumbleBundle. The Storybundle program will grow 150% in size in 2017, which sounds really impressive but just means 3 bundles instead of 2. Plus – SFWA’s Self-Publishing Committee has taken that effort over, so no work for me! (Last year I read a bajillion books for it.)
  • A long, slow revamp of Emergency Medical Fund stuff driven by Jennifer Brozek, Oz Drummond, and Bud Sparhawk is coming to its final stages. I just saw the EMF stewards in action: they received an appeal, evaluated it within 24 hours, and within a week, if I am correct, funds had been disbursed. The Grants Committee just wrapped up its 2017 work; next year it’ll have even more money to play with, thanks to the aforementioned Nebula HumbleBundle.

(2) A BIT ICKY. A nine-year-old got a lovely note from the outgoing Doctor Who. BBC has the story: “Doctor Who: Peter Capaldi reassures fan over regeneration”

(3) SIPS. Charles Payseur is back with “Quick Sips – Beneath Ceaseless Skies #241”

With its last issue of the year, Beneath Ceaseless Skies delivers two very dark fantasy stories about expectations and rules, curses and sacrifices. In both characters find themselves playing out roles that have been laid out for them, having to find ways to exist in stifling situations. In both, the main characters must contend with the weight of tradition and expectation. In both, the main characters are faced with strong willed women who want to change things. Who want to break the Rules. And in both stories the main characters have to face what the world is like, what their life might be like, should those Rules shatter. It’s an interesting issue that asks some very difficult questions and reveals some visceral hurts. To the reviews! …

(4) DOG STAR. The Storm Trooper K-9 division –

(5) CURTIS OBIT. The actor who famously played a disfigured Star Wars cantina criminal has died reports Yahoo! Entertainment.

Alfie Curtis, the British actor who earned a place in the Star Wars pantheon for playing the menacing Mos Eisley Cantina scofflaw with the “death sentence on 12 systems,” has died, according to the BBC. He was 87. News of Curtis’s death was first reported by the fan site Elite Signatures.

(6) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • December 27, 1904 — J. M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan premiered in London
  • December 27, 1951Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere premiered.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY STARGAZER

  • Born December 27, 1571 — Johannes Kepler

(8) YOUNG SETH MACFARLANE’S STAR TREK VIDEO. David Klaus sent this video and made these comments about it on Facebook:

I presume this is only an excerpt of a longer fan film Seth MacFarlane made as a teen, a far better film than I could have made when I had thoughts about trying to do when I was a teen many years before this.

His space background is an artist’s conception of gases spiraling into the event horizon of a black hole, pretty cool, along with what appears to be an AMT model of the refit Enterprise. His voice occasional verges into sounding like Shatner’s instead of his own, and he uses sound effects and music from the original series. I’d get a kick out of seeing the whole thing.

 

(9) NUKE HOBBYIST. He told NPR it’s not that hard, compared to what else is done today in manufacturing: “North Korea Designed A Nuke. So Did This Truck Driver”

To make his models, he drove 1,300 miles to Los Alamos, N.M., the birthplace of the atomic bombs. The museum there has accurate, full-scale replicas of Little Boy and Fat Man that he could work from. As he designed his models, he decided he’d write a brochure to go with them.

“The brochure turned into a 431-page book,” he says.

Coster-Mullen never sold a single model, but he has been adding to his bomb brochure ever since, building up what are basically complete specs for America’s first nuclear weapons. He has traveled the country, and the world, to glean all sorts of supposedly secret details.

“Nobody leaked anything to me,”he says. “I found all this information was hiding in plain sight.”

(10) SOI DISANT DISNEY PRINCESS. She’s willing to take the promotion!

(11) BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Chris Nuttall argues the case for the original — “Classic Battlestar Galactica – The Review” at Amazing Stories.

Battlestar did it’s level best to depict a society that was different from ours, even though it had points in common. Everything from the ranks and uniforms to the games and terminology smacked of an alternate universe, not men and women who could have walked off a modern day aircraft carrier. It wasn’t that far from America, I admit, but it was different – again, unlike the remake. It’s really a pity they didn’t put quite so much thought into their FTL drive concepts, as the exact nature of ‘light-speed’ is never really addressed.

Like most other shows from that era, Battlestar needed a good cast – the special effects could not carry the show by themselves. And Battlestar had some very good characters – Commander Adama, Apollo, Starbuck, Tigh and Boomer … and, on the other side, Baltar and Count Iblis. (Notably, Baltar was originally executed by the Cylons after betraying the Twelve Colonies, but he was later brought back because they needed someone as the face of the enemy, a problem the remake sought to solve with ‘skin-jobs.’)

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, David K.M. Klaus, Will R. Cat Eldridge, and Chip Hitchcock. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day OGH.]

134 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/27/17 A Very Modest Scroll

  1. From the year 7181 we find it suspicious that the time machine and Rev Bob have both returned at the same time… 😉

  2. What’s frightening is that the Pledge of Allegiance was originally done with the Bellamy salute. So picture a bunch of kids with their arms out, pointed at the flag, as they repeated the pledge.

    When I was in school, there was a lot of effort to get us to think about what we were saying. Most kids just repeated the words (or sometimes just the syllables) without understanding their meaning. Not sure it really worked. We pretty much stopped doing it around the 4th or 5th grade.

  3. @Kendall

    @Andrew: I may still have “Melee” and “Wizard,” though I forget where/when/why I got them, waaaaaay back in the day. I’m not sure I remembered they were an RPG, but then, I’m not sure I ever actually played them. ?

    Back in the day, I’d accumulate RPG & related stuff here and there – sometimes gifts, passed along from friends, or even inherited (one time) – so at this point I have a large, weird assortment gathering dust in the basement.

    I played Melee and Wizard in the school cafeteria at lunchtime – it was quick and easy to play, and a pencil can be converted into a D6 with ease. I also have a bunch of RPG material about the house that I haven’t used (or seen) in years.

    @Paul

    The first season of Buck Rogers, anyway. The second season?

    …ugh. (IMHO anyway)

    That matches my memory – once they left Earth, Buck Rogers lost its charm for me.

    American here: I’ve never seen photos of the current President in a classroom (Presidents change more frequently than Queens do, making updating the photo less practical).

    I’m enjoying “The Orville” quite a bit – for me, I has the Star Trek feel of a team of people sincerely attempting to do their best for a decent cause. It doesn’t always hit the target, but it seems to be trying to do so.

  4. Del Cotter: I’d just like everybody in fandom to be clear I never wrote anything like that, and I don’t think that, so it’s not possible for anyone to be “with me on that”. I was pointing to certain details as culturally highly specific, not criticizing them.

    My apologies for not being more clear: when I said “I’m with you on that”, it was in reference to the flag in the schoolroom being an overtly American thing. I still am not seeing how the other things are distinctly American, though.

  5. John A Arkansawyer: <video links with discussion of varying types of humor>

    Thank you for that post; it is a very good example of a meaningful post which does not leave others trying to guess what meaning was intended.

  6. @JJ: You’re very welcome. This holiday season, it’s been a Despicable Me-fest with the kid and the kid’s mom. I’ve loved it. Before I go see them today, I’m picking up a copy of Defending Your LIfe. Fifteen is old enough to enjoy it and the kid should be exposed to the supernatural rom-com as part of genre awareness training.

  7. Battlestar Galactica (the original) had some nice ship designs, but when I tried to revisit it I found it all but unwatchable. Buck Rogers I haven’t actually seen since it was on the air, which may be for the best.

  8. I was neutral on Seth MacFarlane until The Orville. Now I love him. I didn’t know how much I missed ST:TNG until his new show borrowed from it so completely. I even find most of the digressions into typical MacFarlane humor to be amusing, though sometimes they go for a laugh that’s too cheap even for me.

    The little touches of The Orville are the best. The external spaceship intros from commercial breaks! The way a beat plays out with crew members walking as a scene ends! A clean, optimistic future full of competence and teamwork! Crew uniforms that look like onesies!

    I appreciate where MacFarlane updates the premise for modern sensibilities. There’s an episode where his captain character Ed Mercer confronts the alien male he caught in bed with his wife, which led to the dissolution of his marriage. The story takes an unexpected turn when they sleep together. The show doesn’t stigmatize Ed’s bisexuality. It isn’t treated as a big deal by anyone else, nor do we have to endure Ed having a male panic homophobic freakout. It’s played as normal and unexceptional.

  9. I was replying to Aaron’s remark that “McFarlane is never funny”, which I think fails pickily on the “never”–surely he’s been funny once?–and substantively on the fact that millions of people disagree.

    People laugh at VD. People are currently laughing at Milo. Neither is funny.

    MacFarlane is “funny” in the same way VD is funny.

  10. On claiming that the Cold War ended when America landed on the moon:
    Comment [A409]: Moon landing was 1969. Berlin Wall didn’t fall till 1990. Russia quitting the space race was NOT the end of the Cold War.

    Uhm, the Berlin Wall and the entire East/West German border was opened on November 9, 1989, which also happened to be my grandma’s 70th birthday (and since grandma was herself from East Germany and had fled to West Germany in the 1950s, she got one hell of a birthday present). The Wall and the rest of the border did not come down until later, if only because the East/West German border installations were very massive and contained nasty stuff like mines or spring guns, so taking them down was a lot of work. And the unification didn’t happen until October 3, 1990. But the Berlin Wall and the East/West German border effectively ceased to be the scary and lethal barrier it had been for 28 years on November 9, 1989. So Milo’s traumatised editor still gets it wrong, though he is closer to the truth than Milo.

    11) I don’t think that there are a whole lot of things in the universe on which I would agree with Christopher Nuttall (though he subscribes to my newsletter), but I agree with him on Battlestar Galactica. The original will always have a soft spot in my heart, if only because it was one of the few science fiction shows available on the three-channel TV landscape in which I grew up. And yes, the original Battlestar Galactica has its share of flaws and genuinely weak episodes (all of those Wild West planet of the week episodes, where the backlot western city was dressed up with fairy lights), but it is a lot better than its reputation suggests. I think it’s also easy to underestimate the impact of a show which kills off teen pop idol Rick Spingfield, a guy you expect will be the star of the show, in the first 10 minutes of the pilot and then kills off most of the human race five minutes later. In this era of Game of Thrones, that sort of thing is normal, but even when I first watched the show in the mid 1980s, it was absolutely shocking, because TV shows just didn’t work that way.

    The effects, while primitive today, were top-notch for their time and look a lot better than what Doctor Who, Blake’s Seven, Space 1999 or other SF shows of the same era offered. The cast was very good and included some top talent such as Fred Astaire, Lew Ayres, Patrick Macnee, Lloyd Bridges and Ina Balin in guest roles. Plus, the principal characters were all likeable (except Baltar and Iblis obviously and even they were charmingly evil), unlike the 2000s version, where everybody was a horrible person. The fact that the cast included plenty of attractive people didn’t hurt either. Richard L. Hatch as Apollo was one of my earliest crushes, whereas my Mom had a crush on Lorne Green’s Adama and particular Terry Carter’s Colonel Tigh.

    And even though Battlestar Galactica often wound up looking like America in space (I’d also add the very American court set-up in the trial episode and the fact that Battlestars are modelled after aircraft carriers) in retrospect, the production team at least tried to create a world that is different. The uniforms, the measurement units, the vaguely described polytheistic religion, etc… all attempt to distance the show from contemporary America. And even the more obvious Americanisms like space basketball and space poker at least have a veneer of otherness about them. It also probably helped that the show hit our screens in the mid 1980s, several years after it originally aired in the US. By then fashion had changed so much that the very 1970s look of the costumes seemed outlandish and – since so much of my early SF exposure was to 1970s filmic SF a couple of years removed that I subconsciously associate 1970s fashions with SF – science fictional. Coincidentally, sometime in the late 1980s I found a couple of old 1970s clothes in my Mom’s closet that looked so much like Battlestar Galactica costumes that they made for excellent cosplay.

    Meanwhile, the new Battlestar Galactica didn’t even make an effort to feel otherworldly. It felt and looked just like contemporary North America, while the characters reenacted contemporary US conflicts without even bothering to veil them in the slightest. I suspect if you only listened to the dialogue, there are probably moments where you couldn’t tell if you were listening to the new Battlestar Galactica or a mid 2000s political debate program.

    8) Seth MacFarlane seems to be genuine Star Trek fan and by all accounts he has done a good job with The Orville.

    However, my first exposure to Seth MacFarlane and his brand of humour was the 2013 Oscars, where this dude I’d never heard of or seen before (I don’t watch Family Guy) strolled on stage, sang about seeing the boobs of various actresses present and made the most offensive jokes imaginable. And I literally sat there open-mouthed and asked myself, “Who the hell is this dude and why doesn’t someone kick him off stage? Hell, why doesn’t someone brain him with an Oscar already? Please, just make it stop.” Though MacFarlane did make me laugh once that night with a joke that was just as offensive as every other one he told, but that skewered a particular US sacred cow that isn’t sacred to me, so I could laugh about it.

    Ever since then, MacFarlane has been “that boob singer dude” to me and I have a hard time watching anything he is involved with. I’ve heard a lot of good things about The Orville, but I have yet to watch an episode, because of my aversion to Captain Boob Singer.

    Though considering I eventually forgave Ron D. Moore for what he did to Battlestar Galactica, because he’s done a really good job on Outlander and respected the source material for one, I may eventually forgive MacFalrane for the 2013 Oscars, too.

  11. Who the hell is this dude and why doesn’t someone kick him off stage?

    MacFarlane was giving the Oscars exactly what the show’s producers should have expected, given his work up to that point. It was a lot of juvenile Family Guy-style humor with an occasional witty, biting, subversive joke.

    But don’t mistake that for a compliment. I thought that his performance that night was bad too.

  12. Regarding national symbols in schools, a lot of German schools have flagpoles where flags are hoisted on the respective days, but the only time I have ever seen a national flag inside a school was as decoration during a maritime themed carnival party, where we simply put a bunch of flags of various nationalities on the wall as decoration.

    There are official portraits of the German president to be found in some official buildings, but never in public schools. And indeed, the only time you will see a photo of a politician on a German school wall is on student-made posters for politics and history classes. The school where I used to teach had several portraits of physicist Lise Meitner on the walls (the school was named for her), which I for one find extremely cool.

    When I was five, I spent almost a year in Mississippi and attended kindergarten there. My kindergarten had pictures of all US presidents up to the current one (then Jimmy Carter) on the wall (probably the same poster that Greg mentioned), including Jefferson Davies – well, it was Mississippi, after all. According to my parents, I could recite the names of all the presidents at one point, though I sure as hell couldn’t do that now. They also made us recite the Pledge of Allegiance (which I can still do) and I even got to hold the flag once. Coincidentally, I had no idea what they made us recite. I assumed it was just a poem. I’m a bit surprised that my parents didn’t find any of this strange or problematic, but if they did, they never said anything.

  13. JJ, big thanks! The switch for ‘new posts’ was on, but the one for ‘new comments’ was off. Presumably, everything’s swell now. Glad I asked for help instead of whatever I was doing before. (Hoping for a miracle, perhaps?)

    And I bookmarked that page, because you just can’t have too many bookmarks!

  14. @John A Arksawyer:

    Before I go see them today, I’m picking up a copy of Defending Your LIfe. Fifteen is old enough to enjoy it and the kid should be exposed to the supernatural rom-com as part of genre awareness training.

    It’s been ages since I’ve seen that one. Thanks for reminding me of it. Once in a while I see “Defending Your Life” in my DVR listing, but it turns out to be a 30-minute religious program. For genre awareness training, you may need to provide footnotes to explain who “Shirley Maclaine” is, and why her presence in the Past Life Pavilion is relevant.

  15. I seem to recall that there was even an X-rated movie that was a parody or homage to the Albert Brooks pic. Sorry, I don’t know if it followed the original or not, but it was called DEFENDING YOUR SEX LIFE.

    Pretty restrained for a porn title!

    (Thinking about Albert Brooks made me look once more to see if the first thing I ever saw by him, the “Famous School for Comedians,” has made it to YouTube yet. Nope. There are two clips, but the flavor of the whole thing is captured better in the original Esquire piece.)

  16. Now I’m curious: don’t you have pictures of the current President in American schools? I can’t for the life of me remember if we ever had pictures of the President of the Republic in Italy (a mandate that lasts seven years and is often repeated).

    Never in my experience.

    Now, given that American primary and secondary education is run at the local level, variously by towns, counties, and independent school districts, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some school district somewhere that does that. But honestly, I’d find that disturbing.

    I’m just downright gobsmacked that people who regard the US flag and Pledge of Allegiance strange and abnormal, would make that judgment while taking it for granted that the picture of the current political leader of the country should be in every classroom. Cult of personality, much?

    I’m being completely honest when I say, that sends chills down my spine, and not in a good way. I’d expect a picture of Putin in Russian classrooms, but not the President or PM of any democratic country.

    (Yes, this is your example for the day of how Cultures Differ Lots. Even cultures that have a lot of cross-fertilization. The part of my mind that is detached and analytical can fully understand that things that look similar can have very different meanings to people in different cultures. But still. Picture of the current elected leader in every class room? WTF?)

    Even here in 2823, I find this very disturbing…

  17. @IanP: “From the year 7181 we find it suspicious that the time machine and Rev Bob have both returned at the same time…”

    Well, not exactly the same time…

    @Aaron:

    People laugh at VD. People are currently laughing at Milo. Neither is funny.

    MacFarlane is “funny” in the same way VD is funny.

    You seem curiously invested in getting other people to join you in denouncing Seth MacFarlane’s sense of humor. It may not align with yours, and that’s fine – but that’s all it is. You are not the arbiter of universal truth on this (or any other) matter.

  18. Cora,
    What part of Mississippi? And about when?
    I ask as someone who grew up in Jackson in the 70’s.

  19. You seem curiously invested in getting other people to join you in denouncing Seth MacFarlane’s sense of humor.

    Well, he’s not funny. He’s just a dick.

    If you want to laugh at him, that’s up to you, but it just means you’re laughing along with a dick. It tells me a lot about you if you do.

    And I wouldn’t have gone on about it had Arksawyer not hopped in with his smarmy shitty “correction”.

  20. @Aaron:

    Well, he’s not funny. He’s just a dick.

    If you want to laugh at him, that’s up to you, but it just means you’re laughing along with a dick. It tells me a lot about you if you do.

    And right now, you’re being a dick. If I were to agree with you, it would only mean I was agreeing with a dick. That would say a good deal about me, hmm?

  21. And right now, you’re being a dick.

    Pointing out MacFarlane is just a dick is not actually being a dick. But the fact that you think it is also tells me quite a bit about you.

  22. @Lis Carey

    I’m just downright gobsmacked that people who regard the US flag and Pledge of Allegiance strange and abnormal, would make that judgment while taking it for granted that the picture of the current political leader of the country should be in every classroom. Cult of personality, much?

    Ahem, I find both being made to pledge allegiance to a flag and pictures of current heads of state in classrooms strange and slightly disturbing (and like I said, we don’t have pictures of the current president or chancellor in classrooms and we don’t pledge allegiance to flags or anything else). My parents apparently weren’t bothered by either, but then I suspect that they did not have a whole lot of knowledge of what went on in that kindergarten, except that the kids were more quiet and disciplined than their German counterparts (which was true) and that they learned more.

    @BravoLimaPoppa3
    Biloxi in 1978. The kindergarten was privately run, but not affiliated with a church, though we prayed every day before eating cookies and drinking juice. Coincidentally, the praying never bothered neither me nor my parents, though I recall telling the kindergarten teacher one day (after I figured out that what they were doing before eating was praying – mind you, I spoke hardly any English when I got there, so it took me some time to understand what was going on) that I would henceforth pray the way I was used to and entwine my hands differently than they did.

  23. I don’t like Seth MacFarlane’s stuff, I think John was being passive-aggressive and I think Aaron’s being a dick.

    I think one can do all those independently.

  24. @Kurt Busiek – I don’t like Seth MacFarlane’s stuff, I think John was being passive-aggressive and I think Aaron’s being a dick.

    Well, that saved me some typing, not that we do a lot of that in the 23rd century.

    My kids were at their dad’s house one weekend in 2002 and I went over to hang out with them. They were watching Family Guy and my unfiltered response to the five minutes I saw cost me a buck for the swear jar (0.25 per word). I’m pretty sure it started out, “What in the actual…”

    I went to Catholic school for most of elementary school. We had flags we never saluted and a picture of the Pope in every classroom. The Pledge of Allegiance was something I encountered late enough in childhood that it never felt anything but creepy.

  25. Cora,
    Thanks. I had a literal flashback there with what you described even though it was separated by hundreds of miles and 3 years.
    Guh. .
    I’ll say this much Mississippi is a nice place to be from.
    Bed now.

  26. That being the case, I admire Seth MacFarlane’s bravery and his ethical compass. (I say that in the belief that though MacFarlane has achieved a certain level in the industry, that Weinstein was at a higher one, and MacFarlane was still taking a risk in opening up on the subject.)

  27. @Cora–

    Back on the first page of comments, where you may have missed it or not remembered it in reading my comment, Anna expressed apparent surprise at US schools not having pictures of the current President in schoolrooms.

    It really would be deeply abnormal here. Your Mississippi private school that had pictures of all the Presidents up to the then-current Jimmy Carter, and including Jefferson Davis, is not the same as having an official portrait of the current President in every classroom. Pictures of all the Presidents (even Jefferson Davis, once we grant that yes, we’re talking about Mississippi) is something that has a legitimate pedagogical use in teaching history.

    I don’t think that there are many Americans participating here who think that having the flag in every classroom and reciting the Pledge every morning is a good idea. It just, because most of us grew up with it, doesn’t have the same frisson of scary-weird that the idea of an official portrait of the current President in every classroom does.

    And right now I believe for the first time ever, we have a President who might decide it’s a good idea and he’s entitled to it. 🙁

    I do recall stating quite explicitly, though, that these are things on which particular cultural sensitivities can differ wildly, and that the part of the brain that analyzes and the part of the brain that reacts can have quite different opinions.

    Maybe not explicitly enough, though. I’ve been bounced into 3545, now, and all this bouncing around may not be promoting clear writing. 😉

  28. Slightly off-topic but a friend just called to tell me that Rose Marie has passed away.
    Most people just remember her from Dick Van Dyke but she and Morey Amsterdam did one of the funniest episodes of the TV show ” Herman’s Head”.
    We went to see the documentary about her–“Wait for Your Laugh” and can’t recommend it highly enough.

  29. Also-reading the court documents how the editor from Simon & Schuster tried toning down Milos whatever and watching him lose all patience was fun today.

    https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/946347142012051456
    But already the snowflakes on the right are screaming about how it was CENSORSHIP!! JDA

    And according to JDA–John C Wright has the title of Science Fiction Grand Master. Is there an on-line shop where you can get one of those? Like being an ordained minister for ten bucks?

  30. @Harold: “Is there an on-line shop where you can get one of those? Like being an ordained minister for ten bucks?”

    Ten bucks? Man, I got my online ordination for free – although, granted, they did offer to sell me some tangible goodies for a nominal fee.

  31. rcade: MacFarlane was giving the Oscars exactly what the show’s producers should have expected, given his work up to that point.

    Yeah, it was the same sort of train-wreck as the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner: the person in charge of hiring the emcee signing up someone with a huge amount of popularity, without bothering to first find out exactly for what that entertainer was popular…

  32. Yeah, it was the same sort of train-wreck as the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner

    That is one of my favourite moments this century. ^^

  33. Hampus Eckerman: That is one of my favourite moments this century.

    I have to admit that I’ve watched it 3 times. 😀

  34. I think my school (English, state, 1980s) had a flagpole which would see a Union Flag on it now and again. There might have been an aged and faded picture of the Queen in the library, certainly neither had a place in classrooms.
    I sort of associate veneration of the flag or the dear leader with fascism, and it’s always a bit surprising that the otherwise nice USA might do either.

  35. Get some actress who’s survived years of harassment in Hollywood to present the Oscars and sing ‘I’ve seen your dick (you dick)’ to all the actors and execs with a penchant for self-exposure.

  36. @Aaron: “Well, he’s not funny. He’s just a dick.” (Italics added.)

    Again, it’s not your opinion I disagree with. Some of MacFarlane’s bits appall me. I don’t seek out Family Guy, but I always laugh at it when I see it, and I almost always find something to cringe about in it. Dickish is a fair word for much of his style of humor. If you want to call him a dick for that, I won’t argue the point.

    (The Simpsons is funnier and better than Family Guy and it, too, appalls me, though less often. I like King of the Hill much, much better. I don’t know how many of you have seen this great comic, but it gets at why I feel this way, and what appalls me in comedy.)

    It’s the extremity of just a dick that I say is wrong. That goes beyond your opinion about his work and into who and what he is. I mean, I don’t think he sat down before the Oscars and said, “What can I do to be a dick to female actors?” I think this scenario is closer:

    That director didn’t set out to make a tone-deaf commercial. He set out to do something good and it misfired. MacFarlane seems to me to have intended something much similar with the Oscars and fallen prey to Poe’s Law (or something like it) in the process. That’s not what someone who is just a dick does. A jackass, maybe.

    (Let me pre-empt “intent isn’t magic” by agreeing that it’s not; however, it speaks to one’s internal state. Doing something dickish isn’t necessarily the same as being a dick.)

    “People laugh at VD. People are currently laughing at Milo. Neither is funny. MacFarlane is ‘funny’ in the same way VD is funny.”

    Later: “If you want to laugh at him, that’s up to you, but it just means you’re laughing along with a dick.”

    You corrected yourself there. People laugh at Milo and VD, but with MacFarlane. He’s funny; they aren’t. They’re ridiculous.

  37. I mean, I don’t think he sat down before the Oscars and said, “What can I do to be a dick to female actors?”

    Whether he was aware he was being a dick is entirely irrelevant. He was a dick to female actors. His intent is irrelevant. His self-awareness is irrelevant.

    And his Oscar appearance is why he gets no credit from me for “outing” Weinstein. We know, for example, that Salma Hayek only appeared nude in Frida because Weinstein threatened to shut down production in the middle of making it unless she agreed to do so. It is likely many of the other actresses who have appeared nude in movies have similar stories. They were pressured, coerced, and otherwise pushed into showing up naked on film by Weinstein and guys like him when they really didn’t want to.

    And then MacFarlane shows up at the Oscars and japes about it in a situation in which they have to either grin and take it or be thought of as humorless drags. He took what was supposed to be a high point for them and shit all over it. MacFarlane is just as much a part of the problem as Weinstein. The fact that he doesn’t realize it almost makes him worse.

  38. People laugh at Milo and VD, but with MacFarlane. He’s funny; they aren’t.

    He is funny in exactly the same way VD and Milo are funny. His “humor” is exactly the same as their “humor”.

  39. Aaron: And then MacFarlane shows up at the Oscars and japes about it in a situation in which they have to either grin and take it or be thought of as humorless drags. He took what was supposed to be a high point for them and shit all over it.

    Yeah, I can’t imagine what Weinstein’s victims were feeling during that, but I suspect it was very much like, “You Hollywood men all know what he’s doing! And yet you don’t do anything to stop it, you just laugh and joke about it, while he continues to assault women and sabotages the careers of those who don’t go along with it!” 😐

  40. I don’t think that there are many Americans participating here who think that having the flag in every classroom and reciting the Pledge every morning is a good idea.

    I grew up in Texas. In elementary school we had a flag in the classroom and said the Pledge of Allegiance. I liked doing it. I can’t recall if we still did it in junior or senior high.

    My sons grew up in Florida. They also said the pledge all the way through high school. I was pleased when they began to rebel against being compelled to say the pledge. One of my sons stood but stopped saying the words.

    I think the pledge, like the anthem at sporting events, is treated like it is compulsory by a lot of Americans. That diminishes the pleasure I take from both demonstrations. It’s antithetical to freedom. The more that people and grandstanding politicians abuse those who don’t participate, the less I feel like participating.

  41. In Colorado, we may have recited the pledge in school. It was so routine, it slips away. Pretty sure we did it at some of our assemblies. I remember in junior high we’d have a live trumpeter in a hallway playing a reveille in the morning and probably Taps late in the afternoon. We’d stop what we were doing and act respectful till it was over.

    In my last year of high school, I was friends with one of the two ROTC members whose responsibility it was to take down and fold the US flag at the end of each school day. Since the other never showed up, I would take it down with my friend, and fold it properly (triangle by triangle) and then stow it in a shelf at the receptionist’s desk, and then he’d give me a ride home in his truck. I always liked the optics of the hippie and the Rotzi solemnly performing the little ceremony, especially when he was in uniform.

    (Note: I’ve never seen a spelling for the nickname for a ROTC cadet. It rhymes with Nazi. My friend—see above—was fond of assuming a Cheech & Chong voice and saying, “Hey, Rotzi! Hey, who cuts your HAIR, man?”)

  42. “Defending Your Life” is one of my favorite movies (we watched it and another favorite, “Stranger than Fiction,” for Christmas here), but watching it will show you there’s been a definite shift in how we depict the elderly that I suspect started shifting as soon as the Baby Boomers first started spotting gray hairs.

    My somewhat belated Christmas present to y’all is another Doc Savage read, which I hope you enjoy: http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/2017/12/28/reading-doc-savage-the-czar-of-fear/

  43. I remember reciting the pledge in grade school (no picture of the president on that wall, that I remember).

    I also remember the principal reciting the Lord’s Prayer every day at lunchtime, and the teachers walking us across the street every Wednesday for Bible studies. (This was in a public school in Eugene, Oregon.)

    Then that suddenly stopped. It was a few years later before I realized that it had stopped because of the SCOTUS ruling banning prayer in public schools in 1962.

    All in all, I’d say that being forced to recite the pledge in a public school was a lot less burdensome than forced prayer.

  44. I wouldn’t be surprised if the current US President decided that it would be a dandy idea to have a big picture of Himself front and center in all classrooms, with a Loyalty Oath to be recited each morning facing the portrait of The Leader. 🙁

  45. When my sons attended elementary school in St. Augustine, one had a class with a prominent photo of MLK in his room. I took great pleasure at seeing that photo in that school, given the city’s shameful history regarding the civil rights hero. Forty years earlier a local offered him a place to stay. The house was shot up. Now in the same place it’s a point of pride to schoolkids that he came here and fought for civil rights.

  46. But people in other countries don’t have pets, or smoke, or play sports, or play card games? ?

    I guess that was meant tongue-in-cheek but I have to say I never saw a person smoke a cigar in my whole life (not counting TVseries or movies). But Im aware thats a small data point.
    Sports however: Basketball is very US-cetric. Apart from the US, the Philippines (where its no 1 sport) or the odd baltic state all countries would chose some other sport – mainly football (soccer).
    Poker is a very US-centric thing as well. Yes, thanks to high-stakes-tournaments and online play its played everywehre now, but mainly at tournaments and online. As a parttime its an US-Thing. I literally wrote a book on games played in other countries (in German) and Im quite confodent that in Germany people ususally play Skat, Doppelkopf, Schafkopf or Rummy, in the UK Bridge or Gin Rummy maybe, in Australia 500… Draughts, Chess, Mah-Jongg, Big Two, Go, Backgammon, Dominoes etc. would also be more played (and Im not even counting modern boardgames like Settlers)
    So yes, Battlestar Galactica is vers American in space and while appreciate their take on it, they still cater to their audience (of course Star Trek was also very American in many ways).

    Re: Flags/political leaders: In Germany there are no flags in classrooms (guess why) and its not allowed to have pictures of current leaders as official posters, because classrooms should be politically neutral and not in favour of a party (even if its the ruling one). Technically it would probably be allowed to have heads of all party leaders but nobody is seriously considering that.

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