From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V16 #85 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Monday, March 5 2007 Volume 16 : Number 085 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Sarah Silverman [Rex ] Re: My name is "Bob Seger", and I have it on very good authority that Jesus Christ was never circumcised (not even *once*!)! [] Re: My name is "Bob Seger", and I have it on very good authority that Jesus Christ was never circumcised (not even *once*!)! [] VU Acetate MP3s [Jeff Dwarf ] yet more TVManiax! [Christopher Gross ] I was very appreciative of the opportunity to speak and to share the stage with my good friend, David Horowitz. [] Re: NPR's Ode to Metal ["Miles Goosens" ] and even more [Christopher Gross ] Re: My name is "Bob Seger", and I have it on very good authority that Jesus Christ was a metal fan ["Miles Goosen] Re: NPR's Ode to Metal [Rex ] Re: and even more ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: My name is "Bob Seger", and I have it on very good authority that Jesus Christ was never circumcised (not even *once*!)! [] Re: Movie Talk [Capuchin ] Re: My name is "Bob Seger", and I have it on very good authority that Jesus Christ was never circumcised (not even *once*!)! [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 14:33:45 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: Sarah Silverman On 3/5/07, vivien lyon wrote: > > > I think she gives female comedians a bad rep. It's been hard enough for > funny women toconvince the entertainment industry that they should be > taken...um... seriously. I want to say to her- Look, honey, if the only > way > you can get laughs is by being "naughty", maybe you should rethink this > whole comedy thing. I'm also convinced that the only reason she's ever > been > given stage time is that she's hot. I remember being quite pro-Silverman at one point, but I can't for the life of me recall what, other than a few DR. KATZ and LARRY SANDERS appearances, made me feel that way. I guess I always thought of her in that Janeane Garofalo vein, which remains, to me, a good thing, although the last time I remember seeing Janeane was as a psycho-liberal marionette in TEAM AMERICA... where has she gone? - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 15:07:47 -0800 (PST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: My name is "Bob Seger", and I have it on very good authority that Jesus Christ was never circumcised (not even *once*!)! On Mon, 5 Mar 2007, Christopher Gross wrote: > Now, I don't want to start an extended Buffy discussion. I think it's pretty easy to argue that everything's just an extended Buffy discussion. > And getting away from the classics, I'm also quite fond of Family, Dirty > Girls and The Pack. The Pack? Seriously? As for your other comments, those are all really good episodes and I could add at least half a dozen to it (The Replacement and Tabula Rasa spring instantly to mind), but I meant something fairly specific with that "perfect episode" moniker. I really think there's nothing wrong with them. For comparison, I LOVED the first season of Veronica Mars (the second season so much less so that it's hard for me to imagine watching the third), but don't believe any of the episodes were perfect (A Trip To The Dentist comes quite close, though). Deadwood has maybe two, but the titles are not coming to mind. > As far as Angel goes, I love the final episode, but season 5 as a whole > doesn't thrill me as much as it seems to thrill most fans. (I've just > been rewatching it recently.) On the whole season 3 is probably my > favorite. It's angsterrific! Season 3 is so dark, I'm surprised I have any visual memory of it at all. The last third of it is great. But I guess I'm with the group of "most fans" (though I don't really know any outside my circle of friends) because everything after You're Welcome is thoughtful bliss. [Me, then Chris] >> Hell), the over-arching story is about how anarchic collectives are the >> only force of good against the evil of imposed authority. > > Hmmm.... You could actually make a good argument for that. I don't > think the show's creators had a political message in mind, of course. Buffy's posed portrait at the end of the opening credits of every episode from the third, fourth, and fifth seasons is the shot of her from Anne where she literally frees the workers with a hammer and sickle. I don't know how else to take that metaphor. > They approached it strictly from a personal angle. The heart of the > show is Buffy's personal journey to maturity and the "created family" > she formed with her friends, so outside authority figures were natural > and inevitable antagonists. Jeff summed this up nicely. Politics IS personal and the "created family" is exactly what anarchic collectives are all about. In Buffy, this created family fights against the "big bads" that plague anarchists. From the first season to the sixth, they are church (The Master), chaos (Spike and Angelus), well-meaning local government (the Mayor), spiritless bureaucratic government (the Initiative), consumerism (Glory), and the seduction of individual power within the ranks (Willow). The final season is about how emergent leaders must, periodically, disperse their accumulated power to others if the collective is to survive and not become an institution (which is, of course, the first evil from an anarchist perspective). I could go on. Angel tackles the same notions, but focussing almost entirely on the ethical component and attempting to make it more practical (where Buffy is more fantastical and idealized). >> Family Guy is genius, of course. It's daring and hilarious and points >> out all the right weaknesses in popular conceptions. > > Am I the only person in the English-speaking world who neither loves nor > hates Family Guy, but just kinda mildly likes it? As a further comment, I think the JOKES on Family Guy are genius. Viv's right about it being mostly empty. I haven't decided if it's ultimately hurtful or not. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin _______________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 15:11:25 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: My name is "Bob Seger", and I have it on very good authority that Jesus Christ was never circumcised (not even *once*!)! On 3/5/07, Capuchin wrote: > > As a further comment, I think the JOKES on Family Guy are genius. Viv's > right about it being mostly empty. I haven't decided if it's ultimately > hurtful or not. Testiclechins. Testiclechins always tip the balance to "hurtful". - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 15:12:13 -0800 (PST) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: VU Acetate MP3s http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/01/velvet_undergro.html "I believe in the marketplace of ideas even if the other guy doesn't have any." -- Keith Olbermann "So this is what it's come to, these millions of years of evolution, warfare, community-building, women dying in childbirth with hope because their children might achieve more: a video on the Internet of a cat watching a video of a cat on the Internet." -- "Sylvar" . ____________________________________________________________________________________ Any questions? Get answers on any topic at www.Answers.yahoo.com. Try it now. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 18:52:42 -0500 (EST) From: Christopher Gross Subject: yet more TVManiax! On Mon, 5 Mar 2007, Sebastian Hagedorn wrote: > Same here. All things considered I think "The Wire" is the "better" > series, because it's more "important", but Deadwood is more fun. I > only watched the pilot for "Rome" and was underwhelmed. What do you > guys like about it? For me, at least, it's sheer historical geekery. I love the sheer physicality of it, the dirty narrow streets, the rough-woven tunics, the brightly painted buildings, the ever-present fires and braziers, the herald's oratorical gestures, the baths without soap and windows without glass. It's especially pleasurable because of the contrast to all those movies about ancient Rome full of snow-white togas in front of gleaming white marble buildings. THIS Rome looks more like Calcutta than Washington DC, which is exactly as it should be. Beyond that, I think the writers and actors do a pretty good job of getting into the heads of this very different civilization, making their behavior believably foreign yet recognizably human. And the individual characters are generally fascinating, and the actors behind them are all good to great. But I have to agree that the plots are sometimes a little contrived and unbelievable. Hey, nothing's perfect. Re: The Wire: > Right. It's the only show I haven't been able to convince any of my friends > to, because even though they have studied English as well they just don't > understand a word. It's tough for me as well, but I find that after > persevering for an episode or so I get into the flow of it. The dialects can be tough for us white middle-class Americans too, even those of us from the same region of the country. Some of it is supposed to be unique Baltimore speech, not heard anywhere else. In season 3, I think, they add a policewoman whose main job is to listen to all the wiretap recordings and translate them for the other cops. BTW, I think a new season of The Shield is coming in April. > > to have multiple short story arcs, which might have sounded good on paper > > but has lead to some pretty abrupt story resolutions (especially for the > > latest one). > > That's true, but who cares about the crimes? ;-) Good point. This is a characteristic VM shares with Joss Whedon's shows: they could dispense with the regular plots and just let the main characters hang out and talk about their personal lives, and I'd still watch. Now if only Wallace and Mac would hook up. And Veronica and Weevil, of course! How long can that unresolved sexual tension go on? - --Chris ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:09:03 -0800 From: "Stacked Crooked" Subject: I was very appreciative of the opportunity to speak and to share the stage with my good friend, David Horowitz. what the hell was berry doing? just sitting there watching? yeah, that was good. but i think that, "They're against OTAN?!" was even better. and while he had some good lines in *Disco*, i think we can all agree that, "that's like something out of the nazis!" was the best line in that movie. it's a shame eigeman doesn't get more work, though. what i can't understand is all the people who say the animation sucks. i would say that about just about every stand-up comedian who has ever trod the earth. steven wright's an exception. i can't remember if i ever laughed out loud at *Jesus Is Magic*, but i'm pretty sure i didn't totally despise it. i don't know how much of the writing she's responsible for in the new show. it's certainly her sensibility. at any rate, the sub-plots with the gay guys are as funny as her own sub-plots. i never *occurred* to me that it might be important. certainly it's not the case with movies. but apart from the *Sopranos*, i'm having difficult remembering an hour-long drama which i ever thought was any good. oh, i was really into *Thirtysomething* when it was on the air. i wonder if i'd still consider it any good if i were to watch it to-day? oh, i was looking for this a few weeks ago, but it wasn't available yet. i'll have to give it a download as soon as i'm finished with this decemberists torrent. oh, come on. if mayor west isn't the most lovable character in all of teevee, i'll eat your motherfuckin' hat! brian isn't lovable? peter isn't lovable? ollie williams isn't lovable? stewie isn't lovable? (sadistic, sure. but lovable all the same.) the evil monkey isn't lovable? KEN "BlackuWeather Forecast" THE KENSTER ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 18:20:18 -0600 From: "Miles Goosens" Subject: Re: NPR's Ode to Metal On 3/5/07, Bachman, Michael wrote: > > Miles wrote: > >A weird and related phenomenon: these same folks all hate hate hated > country music until Hank Jr. entered the redneck-pandering phase of his > career in the early '80s. Suddenly there'd be a Hank Jr. cassette in > their backpacks, between the Priest and Van Halen. > > The Class of 1986 probably helped as well I bet. The Steve Earle, Dwight > Yoakum and Randy Travis debut albums would all make my top 25 of 1986 > list easily. The guys buying the Hank Jr. albums weren't the same ones buying those three. I was the guy buying those three. STORMS OF LIFE is actually my favorite of those; too bad Randy Travis didn't make anything even nearly as good afterwards. later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 19:21:30 -0500 (EST) From: Christopher Gross Subject: and even more On Mon, 5 Mar 2007, Capuchin wrote: > > Now, I don't want to start an extended Buffy discussion. > > I think it's pretty easy to argue that everything's just an extended Buffy > discussion. Buffy is kind of like the Bible and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in that you can find something in it to relate to almost any situation in life. > > And getting away from the classics, I'm also quite fond of Family, Dirty > > Girls and The Pack. > > The Pack? Seriously? Yeah. I know as many people hate it as love it; at least, I've seen it in as many "10 worst" lists as "top 10" lists. IMO it's one of the better teen trauma allegories, and it's one of the early hints of just how dark the show could get. I also like Nicholas Brendon's performance as a villain; I think he had some real talent in that direction that has never been adequately explored. > As for your other comments, those are all really good episodes and I could > add at least half a dozen to it (The Replacement and Tabula Rasa spring > instantly to mind), but I meant something fairly specific with that > "perfect episode" moniker. I really think there's nothing wrong with > them. I got what you were saying about "perfect" episodes. I was taking it in a different direction by comparing it to my list of favorite episodes, but I wouldn't claim that those other favorites are "perfect." For that matter, if minor flaws count, then I'm not sure *any* episode quite makes perfect. (I'd say The Body comes closest.) So let the record note that I'm not uncritical in my fandom! But on the other hand, I think even the very worst episodes of Buffy have at least one or two redeeming moments. Beer Bad, for example, had that great scene where Willow pretends to fall for Parker's seduction line, then merrilly shoots him down. > > Hmmm.... You could actually make a good argument for that. I don't > > think the show's creators had a political message in mind, of course. > > Buffy's posed portrait at the end of the opening credits of every episode > from the third, fourth, and fifth seasons is the shot of her from Anne > where she literally frees the workers with a hammer and sickle. > > I don't know how else to take that metaphor. Unless they're actually Leninists, I'd take it as the metaphor of people who don't usually think about politics very much. The hammer and sickle symbol was invented by the Bolsheviks after their coup d'etat. It bears roughly the same relationship to working-class movements for justice that the swastika bears to German nationhood. > Jeff summed this up nicely. Politics IS personal and the "created family" > is exactly what anarchic collectives are all about. In Buffy, this > created family fights against the "big bads" that plague anarchists. > From the first season to the sixth, they are church (The Master), chaos > (Spike and Angelus), well-meaning local government (the Mayor), spiritless > bureaucratic government (the Initiative), consumerism (Glory), and the > seduction of individual power within the ranks (Willow). > > The final season is about how emergent leaders must, periodically, > disperse their accumulated power to others if the collective is to survive > and not become an institution (which is, of course, the first evil from an > anarchist perspective). That's certainly a valid and interesting interpretation, and while I could debate this point or that, I certainly won't call it "wrong." I just don't think that Joss and the other writers and producers were consciously aiming for an anarchist political statement. Aside from a broadly feminist attitude, I don't see much sign that had *any* political goals in the strict sense. They were interested in the personal stories of Buffy and her friends. We can draw political lessons from those stories, just like we can draw political lessons from real-life personal experiences. Nothing wrong with that. But it's not the only valid way of understanding at the show, and our ability to draw political lessons doesn't prove that Mutant Enemy *intended* those political lessons. - --Chris ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 18:27:14 -0600 From: "Miles Goosens" Subject: Re: My name is "Bob Seger", and I have it on very good authority that Jesus Christ was a metal fan On 3/5/07, Michael Wells wrote: > Cap: > > There is only this ragtag fugitive fleet of episodes on a lonely quest > for a shining planet known as Narrative. > > > Funny! And dead-on right. Whaaaa? I read Jeme's comment this AM before heading off to work and have been scratching my head ever since (could be dandruff; 9 out of 10 of us have some, I'm told). I mean, if BSG has anything in spades, it's narrative. Saying it lacks narrative is like saying that Robyn's lyrics lack fauna, or DEADWOOD lacks cussin'. > Eddie: > > i got *Deadwood* season one from the library on recommendation from > > this board, and thought it was complete and utter shit. > > > Really? I would have thought you to like it. Jeme is right about the > E.B. scene, though I think that the recommendation was more about the > juxtaposition of scenes like this with rough language, rather than just > the latter by itself. I also felt that the scripts were better (with one > character excepted) in Season Two, maybe there were more plot > soliloquies as well. I watched s1 and s2 on DVD this summer; s1 was very good but slightly undershot my expectations, but oh my, s2 was a killer from start to finish. I'm just now catching up with s3 via the HBO2 repeats, so I'm still not completely spoilerproof on it (I just watched the 9th and 10th episodes, so I'm almost up to date); it's still very good but so far hasn't maintained the ridiculous greatness of s2. later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 16:55:59 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: NPR's Ode to Metal - ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Rex Date: Mar 5, 2007 4:55 PM Subject: Re: NPR's Ode to Metal To: Miles Goosens On 3/5/07, Miles Goosens wrote: > > > > The Class of 1986 probably helped as well I bet. The Steve Earle, Dwight > > Yoakum and Randy Travis debut albums would all make my top 25 of 1986 > > list easily. > > The guys buying the Hank Jr. albums weren't the same ones buying those > three. I was the guy buying those three. That was my observation, too. The local classic-rawkish station experimentally played "Copperhead Road", but not anything pure country. Now there's a dead radio format: a station that played classic rock and (then-)current rock side by side as if there were some kind of, I dunno, continuum there. (Not that the old or new stuff they played was the absolute best or anything, but at least the genre wasn't micromanaged.) Back to hair metal, for sure, when I was introduced to metal, that was all that it was. A few years later when "speed metal" and "death metal" began to appear, it was sort of seen by most as a brand-new "extremification" of metal-as-we-knew-it, not so much a retrenching to the pre-hair days. I was only fainltly, faintly aware of metal from the times before that... specifically, stuff like Sabbath and Judas Priest you were pretty much not allowed to admit to liking, it being a pretty born-again area and those bands being thought to actually be devil-worshippers and youth corruptors*, so I never heard them, only catching the occasional glimpse of an Iron Maiden t-shirt or hearing the odd Ozzy solo track. In any case, it just so happens that I've never found any metal since then that I like, but I really think I was just lucky that I developed an early snobbishness against music that turned out to actually be pretty generally bad instead of having to struggle with my prejudices later. I'm sure if I'd lived somewhere where Echo & the Bunnymen were really popular, I'd've hated them and had to get over it later... it just so happens that I can look at RATT and say, well, not much to rethink there. It did take me a little while to come around to the Cure and New Order, though. - -Rex *nb. if you listened long enough, the fundies would tell you the same thing about Bow Wow Wow and the Pretenders, so there was that. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2007 20:13:11 -0500 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: and even more Christopher Gross wrote: > > Buffy is kind of like the Bible and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, How dare you compare anything to The Guide! Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 19:25:34 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: My name is "Bob Seger", and I have it on very good authority that Jesus Christ was never circumcised (not even *once*!)! On 3/5/07, Capuchin wrote: > > > Jeff summed this up nicely. Politics IS personal and the "created family" > is exactly what anarchic collectives are all about. In Buffy, this > created family fights against the "big bads" that plague anarchists. > From the first season to the sixth, they are church (The Master), chaos > (Spike and Angelus), well-meaning local government (the Mayor), spiritless > bureaucratic government (the Initiative), consumerism (Glory), and the > seduction of individual power within the ranks (Willow). > > The final season is about how emergent leaders must, periodically, > disperse their accumulated power to others if the collective is to survive > and not become an institution (which is, of course, the first evil from an > anarchist perspective). I hadn't really thought of it - but certainly that's a valid interpretation, insofar as the Big Bads' power works in ways similar to the institutions and ideas you describe (and in some cases - such as The Initiative - *are* those institutions). The interesting thing about "disperse their accumulated power" is that in order to do that, people need to understand that "power" isn't singular, that different sorts of powers coexist, some of them earned and useful, others unearned and often destructive, and many lying in between those extremes. (Not that "earning" is necessary for power to be positive: sometimes power is just something someone has, and it's what one does with it that makes the difference. Of course, in the Whedonverse Buffy herself is the prime illustration of that notion.) I could go on. > > Angel tackles the same notions, but focussing almost entirely on the > ethical component and attempting to make it more practical (where Buffy is > more fantastical and idealized). But of course, that ethical component is a necessary part of any sort of political engagement - and the whole Wolfram & Hart thing is pretty explicitly political, in terms of questioning terms of engagement with a system and whether that system is inherently corrupt or corrupt primarily because of who occupies its nodes of power. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 17:30:06 -0800 (PST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Movie Talk On Sun, 4 Mar 2007, Miles Goosens wrote: > BSG is my favorite TV show right now, by far. It's really not so much > about the science in science fiction; in fact, it probably owes as much > to Hill Street and Homicide, in terms of character focus and camerawork, > as it does to any other TV antecedent. Great scripts, great acting, > wonderful plot payoffs and tremendous continuity, no Rodenberry-mandated > happy p.c. resolutions - everything most certainly has a cost in this > show, and no one's hands are clean. Wow. I can't imagine that perspective. I can't pay attention to the camera work without comparing it to Firefly, of course (as Chris pointed out before I wrote that stuff last night, though I didn't read Chris' comments until today). And in comparison, it just fails. It's like they're using all the techniques with none of the artistry. For all its hand-held pretense, they still seem to work very hard to make sure they get their shots just so. Hence, it comes across as more pastiche than verite. The characters are bland and irrational. I don't have much else to write about it. I definitely wouldn't call it "character focussed". Their individual actions are contrived in a way that makes them seem like, well, characters, rather than people. I don't know anybody like them and I can't justify their behavior. As for the scripts, I get the impression the writers don't really have any idea what they're trying to say. I saw quite often that they would insert a scene into an episode that supposedly happened concurrently with some previous episode, but which wasn't shown at the time. Instead, it's inserted now because it's relevant to the current plot. This kind of "just in time" presentation gives the impression of revisionism and gives the audience absolutely no credit. Instead, show me ten episodes later the relevance of what appeared to be an off-hand comment that we'd previously dismissed... but for fuck's sake, don't show us the comment again! > About half the time I want to call it Babylon 5, because that's the show > that comes to mind for me most often when watching it. As much as I > loved B5, BSG may be even better. I never watched Babylon 5. I couldn't get over the overwrought politics of it all. And really, if you're going to have aliens, they have to be either straight-up non-human things to which we cannot relate or exaggerated embodiments of human characteristics or Ideas. If you take the latter route, the situations have to be just as exaggerated and melodramatic else you end up being the worst possible thing: unaware self-parody. I hate to say it, but there's a gold standard for this kind of thing and anything less is just not worth my time. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin _______________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 19:32:01 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: My name is "Bob Seger", and I have it on very good authority that Jesus Christ was never circumcised (not even *once*!)! On 3/5/07, Capuchin wrote: > > > Angel tackles the same notions, but focussing almost entirely on the > ethical component and attempting to make it more practical (where Buffy is > more fantastical and idealized). I forgot to say in my earlier post, I'd say an ethical throughline in Whedon's work is a refusal to accept that givens must be, that one is "good" or "bad" because of who one is or what position one occupies, and that believing that you're good or bad because of who or what you are is itself a (if not the) major problem. In earlier Buffy that was somewhat literalized when Angel figured out how to live with both his soul and knowledge of his evil acts - but more subtly, I think, in the later seasons' (and Angel's) Spike arc, wherein essentially he learns to behave more like a "good person" almost through habit, and through learning to care about people. (A particularly revealing moment here is "Tabula Rasa," the episode after the musical, where Willow's "forgetting" spell affects everyone: Spike gradually comes to recognize that he is (a) a vampire but (b) working with "the good guys" and concludes, in a hilarious self-parody on Whedon's part, that he must be a superhero vampire with a soul... Note that he does *not* know he has a chip implanted, nor that he's supposedly still "evil" in intention.) - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V16 #85 *******************************