Monthly Archives: September 2011

A Fun Interview with the Bridal Showcase Committee

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I have attended approximately 74 weddings in the past two years. Okay, it’s actually only been five (six if you count my cousin’s two weddings separately), but it feels like I’ve done nothing but eat delicious food and admire lovely brides and handsome men in tuxedos for the past two years.

Because that’s totally the fate worse than death, right? Sign me up for that kinda torture any day!

Given all these weddings, I was rather interested in doing a story on the Jamestown Bridal Showcase. The story’s here, and the event sounds like a lot of fun.

The interview sure was. I’ve talked to a lot of committees who organize all sorts of things, over the years, and while most of them are genuinely enthusiastic about everything they do, these folks were positively giddy.

As they pointed out to me, it was like they’d been organizing four weddings. But they all had bride-level enthusiasm for the project. Not bridezilla-type, either, just pure happy-gladness. It was a little crazy interviewing so many people at once, but they were all super patient and talked slow and spelled their names for me and reminded me of their names when I needed it. And they were all fun!

I didn’t quite manage to shoehorn quotes from everyone into the article, though. There just wasn’t space. So I figured I’d put the picture up here instead with everybody’s names.

Some Notes: Tena Kramlich (the gal in the white shirt in the picture) is the unofficial committee chairman for the group and gave me a lot of the information for the article. Everyone agreed Tena had done the most work on the event and praised her efforts. Julie Stahlecker (the gal in the stripey shirt) was also given some group-wide kudos for her efforts.

David Nelson (the man) was the only guy at the meeting that day, so I teased him about the picture looking like an ad for Charlie’s Angels. After he left, everyone agreed Nelson had great ideas and had been quite valuable to the group.

Back row, from left: Margo Haut (Quality Inn & Suites), David Nelson (King Photography Studio), Cara Prescott (Don’s House of Flowers).

Front row, from left: Tena Kramlich (Top Designers Salon & Spa), Shirley Jackson (Riddle’s Jewelry), Alana Lacina (Celebration Innovations), Cindy Schauer (R&C School of Rock), Julie Stahlecker (Top Designers Salon & Spa).

Committee members not pictured:  Nicole Quam (LeAnne’s Bridal and Bliss Prom), Marla Calheim (R&C School of Rock), Matt Stockert (Quality Inn and Suites), Esther Koenig (White’s Home Decor and Tux Shoppe).

Good Guys and Bad Guys and How to Tell the Difference

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I don’t really read comics, but I do know a lot of people who do.

I also read an interesting article the other day stating some people believe Hollywood movies have become too dark. Not, you know,  in the sense that they movies that are sad and angsty about terrible subjects, but just dark. As in their color palettes have inexplicably changed into blacks, browns and dark blues.

Comics still seem to me, at least, to be comparatively bright, on the whole. Maybe that’s an artifact of drawing things rather than filming them.

Maybe Hollywood is just going for realism. … at the same time, I’m sitting in a brightly-lit room full of light at my desk with a fluorescent glass, green cup, multicolored beach ball, green plant and also two green dragons on it. And my droid has a bright red case.

But I digress a bit. The point is, apparently you might often be able to guess whether a character in a comic is a good guy or a bad guy just by looking at the colors he or she wears.

Check out this infographic, and especially check out the costume changes superheroes go through towards the bottom. Interesting stuff! I’m definitely going to think twice before I wear orange, purple or green again…

George Lucas “Improves” More Movies!

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Geek culture was recently incensed by George Lucas’s decision to tweak, alter and add stuff to Star Wars. He’s already changed enough things that his track record is, shall we say, not good–the “shot heard round the world,” to Star Wars fans, is the alteration of the bar scene with Han Solo and Greedo, in which originally, Han shot Greedo first. Lucas changed the shot so it looked like Greedo shot first.

Yes, to a lot of people, this really mattered. We fans take our canon seriously, and Han was supposed to be amoral and ruthless. Not that he was a cuddly bunny if Greedo shot first, but it made a huge difference to a lot of people.

But Lucas cannot seem to leave well enough alone. Recently he decided to add (to a critical point in Return of the Jedi) the sound effect of Vader wailing “NOOOOO” that was frankly bad enough the first time around when we all saw it the first time in Episode III. Those of us who were unfortunate enough to have sat through Episode III, at any rate.

(Yes, it was the best of the sequels, but you know, you could say that shingles is the best of the sequels to chicken pox and you still wouldn’t want shingles, right?)

That “NOOOOOOOO” actually made me laugh in the movie theater. If I recall correctly, everyone around me was embarrassed enough about how awful the movie had gotten that they didn’t even register that they should also be embarrassed by me. Probably for the best.

Now he’s adding that “NOOOOOOOO” to the bit where Vader flings the Emperor down the big bottomless pit thing at the end of the Return of the Jedi. As if it hadn’t been bad enough in Episode III. As if we couldn’t figure out that Vader was actually pretty ticked off at his boss.

You know, I’d say throwing a coworker into a bottomless pit was a pretty good indication of ticked-off-ed-ness. Not that I’ve ever done it. I mean, I’m pretty even tempered. And if I did that, I doubt I’d have enough extra breath to scream “NOOOOOOOOOOO.” I’m pretty out of shape and my coworkers are larger than a breadbox.

Fans are a funny breed. Sometimes they get all righteously huffy about the weirdest things, like Tom Bombadil not being in Lord of the Rings. This time, though, I believe a little righteous fury, coupled with exasperation, is thoroughly in order. Want to know why?

Check this out. Darth Vader’s “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” is every bit as well-placed in this clip as it is in Lucas’s “reimagining” (or perhaps “murdalyzing” would be more accurate) of Return of the Jedi.

Madness and the Poisons We Take

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It’s really amazing to me the whole human race hasn’t killed itself off long ago. We seem to have a bit of a death wish, in some ways–playing with substances we don’t know for certain whether they’re safe, adding questionable things to food and drink and working under questionable conditions.

America hasn’t even been around that long, and apparently, some places in the east were so polluted during the Industrial Revolution era that you could find man-made arsenic lakes out there.

Here are a couple of interesting instances of poisoning:

  • The curious case of Jamaica ginger, or ginger Jake. The stuff was a patent medicine made of ginger and booze, so people used it to get around Prohibition laws. Regulators started testing it to make sure it had enough ginger, so bootleggers started adding other things to it that would pass the tests and still be drinkable. Unfortunately, what they added was a neurotoxin: Tricresyl phosphate. TCP has been used as a gasoline additive, apparently.
  • So has TEL, or tetraethyl lead. The Standard Oil Refinery in New Jersey once processed this stuff, which was used to boost octane ratings, apparently. The building quickly became known as the “loony gas building,” because its workers more or less lost their minds after a time. Some of them wandered around confused, others became irritable, and it got to the point where five of them died. Lead is not good for you, and the masks the workers were given did not keep lead out. Their bodies just kept accumulating it. Here’s a wonderful write-up from the Speakeasy Science blog (which I highly recommend): Part I, Part II.

The interesting thing about both cases is how scientists were involved in each instance of poisoning.

Apparently, the scientist who recommended adding TCP to the medicine wasn’t told the stuff was meant for internal consumption. And scientists tried to stop the TEL process too–the stuff had already been banned in Europe and lead was a known hazard.

Forbidden Spaces

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Detroit isn’t dead.

I just wanted to mention that before I get any further into this post. The city is under siege by economic forces, though, and it’s suffered some pretty severe casualties, some recent, some from a long time ago.

Courtesy of Lynde, here’s a lovely gallery of the beautiful decay of Detroit.

It reminds me quite a bit of the pictures of Chernobyl, but it doesn’t have quite the immediacy of the Prypiat pictures–where people were forced to leave their homes at a moment’s notice, without being told they would never return.

Sept. 11, Voldemort and the Boogeyman

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Some of you may be wondering why I didn’t write anything about Sept. 11 on its 10th anniversary. I suppose I just didn’t want to be redundant; other people have offered great and weighty insights and small and poignant details on the events of that day.

Inspired by how some of my younger friends reacted to Osama Bin Laden’s death, I interviewed some young people at Jamestown College to find out how they had interpreted the attack, as 8-12-year-old children.

When Bin Laden was killed, I honestly didn’t think it was a big deal, because he seemed to me to be one head of a monstrous hydra. Cut it off, and two more take its place. I am somewhat cynical, I know.

My younger friends, however, had a very different reaction. While they had mixed feelings about rejoicing over anyone’s death (even one such as Bin Laden), for them, it represented some form of closure.

I believe one of them likened it, in a nontrivial way, to Harry Potter’s triumph over Voldemort. To this age group, the Potter books serve as a sort of unifying myth; even people who haven’t read the books know enough to talk about them and use their imagery. Voldemort is the essence of evil and corruption, a destroyer who in the book’s mythology, kills freely and believes himself justified.

Again, it was not a flippant comparison. To the young people, it was as if the newscaster had announced that the boogeyman had been killed.

It would have been very easy for me to have gotten overly flowery in my story. I could have written “stolen innocence” or “childhoods ripped away.” I believe that would have been an oversimplification, however.

I am not interested in minimizing what happened to them, but every child at some point will and must grapple with the concept of death, cruelty and evil. Fiction can soften the blow; we first read about Voldemort (or see the Wicked Witch of the West, or Emperor Palpatine on our screens) and we learn to recognize evil, clothed safely in fiction, where it cannot get us. It isn’t real. Voldemort will not show up at our schools; Palpatine will not knock on our doors. We need not worry about meeting the Wicked Witch at the grocery store.

Later we learn evil exists in the real world, too. Sometimes that is at an emotional remove as well–we learn about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, the Holocaust in school, safely in a textbook with the rest of the dead history. It all happened long ago; we are still safe. Right?

Many of the adults who were children 10 years ago did not have this luxury of time and distance. They would have been forced to deal with these issues anyway–as humans we must–but their experience in dealing with it was not the same.

For one thing, it served almost as a uniting event, in a way. I was slightly too young to have realized the impact of the Challenger disaster, but I suspect that served a similar function. Many adults recall the JFK assassination in that way too.

It was a shared loss, a simultaneous, sudden recognition of evil, existing evil in the real world.

Those of us who had already recognized it intellectually (being older) still had to grapple with the visceral truth of it, but it did not have the same type of significance for us, I think.

I only remember the shock and the incomprehension. I was older, in college, and I had studied philosophy for years. 9/11 still baffled me. In a way, it was like the time a girl had threatened to kick my butt in high school: I could not really believe someone could be that barbaric. Certainly I had read about such things, but surely people didn’t do that sort of thing in real life?

But people do. And we are all children in the face of evil.

Ten years later, the boogeyman is dead, yes. But we are not quite finished grappling with these ideas, this problem of the reality of evil. It is not easy for us to understand, whether we were 8 years old or 80. The only advantage age would have offered would have been a swifter recognition: Ah. I have seen you before.

Ah, I have seen you before.

I remember you.

I recognize your face.

We are all children, but we are not helpless, and you cannot taint us. If we cannot understand you, we can still fight you.

The Worst Music of All Time or Maybe Just One Decade

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I am not Allen Ginsberg. I did not see the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked. Instead I saw the best minds of my generation happily rocking out to “Ice Ice Baby,” which is sort of similar, but with more clothing and later, a lot more secret shame.

The Rolling Stone has come out with a list of the worst songs of the 1990s, and surprisingly, “Ice Ice Baby” is not at the top. It is the secret shame of most people age 29-35 or so that we once liked this song.

In about 15 years, when board rooms of respectable, staid executives are mostly filled with people of this age group, know this: Most of the people in leadership positions in the Fortune 500 still remember the words to “Ice Ice Baby.” I predict someone will publicize this and cause a stock market crash as the public suddenly realizes the terrible truth.

I’m not saying that “Ice Ice Baby” should be at the top of the list. The actual holder of that dubious honor, “Barbie Girl,” somehow escaped being banned worldwide by the Geneva Convention, but probably only because the Convention was last signed in 1949 and “Barbie Girl” wasn’t made until 1997.

Otherwise I’m pretty sure it would have been at the top of the Convention’s to-ban list, not just for its vaguely creepy sexual content, but also because of the voice of Lene Nystrom, which has a similar effect on the brain to repeatedly ramming an ice pick into it. The song is also an earworm, so once you listen to it, it will stick with you like … well, like the words to Vanilla Ice.

Had we realized this in 1997, we would have been able to gather up every copy of the song, place it in a secure location (preferably one we didn’t like very much) and put a sarcophagus over it, Chernobyl-style. Then we could have posted signs warning people away from the property. Unfortunately, it’s online, so, like poverty, it will probably never disappear.

There’s plenty of bad to find on this list. There are plenty of earworms, and the less said about “Achy Breaky Heart” the better. But be warned: this list is not for the faint of heart. These songs are apt to stay with you long after you’d like them dead and buried.

Take heed.

’cause I’m a lyrical poet.

Changing the Rules

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All right, I’m changing the rules for the contest. Since no one has even tried to write a limerick or a haiku or a 74-page epic poem, I’m just going to give the breakfast away to whoever a. posts first here on Areavoices and b. can come pick the ticket up before Friday at 5 p.m.

Who wants a free breakfast this weekend? Reply to me first and you’ve got it.

I still want a haiku/poem/six-word story for the hat and nickel, though.

English haiku have a line with five syllables, then a line with seven, then another line with five. Here is an example:

No one wants breakfast
A skeptical buffalo
Sadly wonders why.

Giving Away Free Hat, Free Pancakes, Free Money

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There’s no such thing as a free lunch, but I do have a free breakfast, free buffalo head nickel (undated) and a beautiful free “Courage Carries On” hat to give away.

I’m going to have a contest and whoever writes the best limerick, haiku, or six-word story about kuchen, skeptical buffalo or North Dakota-related topic of your choice will win one of these three shiny prizes.

First place gets first pick, second gets second pick, third place gets whatever’s left and everybody else just gets the total infamy of having your stuff posted on Shiny Thing for ever and always.

Rules:

1. You must be able to come to the Jamestown Sun and pick up your prize in person. Non-Jamestownites (non-Jamestonians?), you’re in it for fortune and glory! We have nothing to fear but fear itself! 54-40 or fight! Come back with your shield or on it!

2. Entries should be posted in the comments, or you can email them to me at klucin@jamestownsun.com. You can enter as many pieces as you want but you must keep them clean. This is a family blog.

3. Deadline is noon Thursday, so you don’t have a lot of time!

The free breakfast is for pancakes at Applebee’s in Jamestown Sept. 10, courtesy of the Grief Support Team. You want this, trust me. Num. The hat (shown below) is courtesy of Courage Carries On. The nickel is from Ohio Valley Gold and Silver, and the date has been rubbed off (very common with this design).

Frankly, if anybody manages to fit the words “Skeptical Buffalo” into any of these poetry types I’m going to be pretty impressed.

What rhymes with “buffalo?”

Destroying My Childhood Love: Putting the Monkey Brain Back

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While I love quite a few movies, books and TV shows, I’m not much of a fan, which is to say: when a piece is adapted into a new medium, I’m not inherently against changing stuff to make it fit better.

I liked the Lord of the Rings movies a whole lot better than the books, for example, and the Last of the Mohicans turned a dull book into a gorgeous movie. I loved the recent Sherlock Holmes. There are also a few cases (such as the recent Star Trek movie) that I’ve liked the product enough to forgive the changes that I really didn’t like.

However, I’ve also seen adaptations that have made me want to fling sharp things at my television set. The first Harry Potter movie was heavy and dull, leaving you feeling like you’d just eaten a bowl of dumplings with gravy. I hated the Transformers movie as I’ve hated few movies before it or since. In both of those cases, though, it was because the finished product was inferior, not because of changes that were made.

Unfortunately, I do have a leetle portion of my brain which could be characterized as “the fan part.”

Today I saw a preview for “The Three Musketeers.”

The fan part of my brain is a little similar to the monkey part of my brain. It is very given to freaking out prematurely and often wants to fling foul-scented projectiles at anything it doesn’t like.

I had a hard time jamming the monkey back in the cage after I saw the teaser trailer for Musketeers.

I didn’t mind that the group had been tasked to steal plans for an airship, or that they apparently had gatling guns and some sort of a fire-gun, but when they referred to a woman as wanting to join the Musketeers I just about flipped my lid.

“They made D’Artagnan a woman?” I asked.

In a state of shock I read the synopsis of the movie, and found they had not, in fact, made D’Artagnan a woman.

Then monkey went back in the cage and I started wondering whether I would have liked it if they had, in fact, made D’Artagnan a woman. Would she have picked a duel with all three Musketeers and then set them all for the same time and place? Would she have seduced a servant to get information about Milady? Would she have behaved as piggishly and gallantly as D’Artagnan does, by turns? What would her relationship with Athos have been?

Whether her position would have been transgressive or not would have depended on the setting. If you’re going to add steampunk to the era, you could also add more egalitarian elements to the setting with no problems whatsoever, provided you kept people’s reactions consistent. Then again, a woman doing all those things in the real world at that time would also have been interesting to watch. How on earth would she have gotten away with it?

It’s all an interesting exercise in reimagining a classic, and of course, it might have been absolutely ghastly-awful and exploitative, or it might have just seemed horribly, horribly wrong. We’ll never know.