January 06, 2010

Top 50 Books of the 2000s

OK, here's one more end-of-decade list, a few days belated. I wasn't planning on covering books, because I wasn't sure how to combine fiction, journalism, memoir, history, biography, sports, gardening, cooking, and everything else into one big category, and I hadn't read 50 books in any subcategory. Plus, I'd already lumped graphic novels in with the comics list. But I did want a place to lay out the really satisfying reads (and audiobook listens) I had over the decade. I decided to skip the academic works; that stuff already has a home on this website, in my syllabi and footnotes. Everything else, fiction and nonfiction, is on the list below. As with the other lists, series are lumped together, but only the volumes published in this decade; for example, the Harry Potter ranking only covers books 4-7.

All of my lists are inherently scattershot, but this one is probably the most unreliable. I managed to catch up with most of the most buzzed-about American comics, TV shows, records, and movies. But it takes a long time to read a book, and I have finicky tastes. I tried and bailed on lots of critics' darlings, and ignored many more. And there are probably hundreds of books I would have enjoyed, if I'd ever heard of them.

As you'll see, I read a lot of fantasy this decade, after reading mostly SF in the 1990s. Many of my favorite "literary" novels engaged fantasy culture as well, including The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I think this has something to do with the zeitgeist, as I argue here, but obviously it has a lot to do with the vagaries of my tastes, as well.

1 - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
2 - The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
3 - Absurdistan, Gary Shteyngart
4 - Game of Thrones series, George RR Martin
5 - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon
6 - The Time Traveller's Wife, Audrey Niffenberger
7 - 3 Bags Full, Leonie Swann
8 - Love Is a Mix Tape, Rob Sheffield
9 - Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, David Foster Wallace
10 - The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
11 - Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
12 - His Dark Materials series, Philip Pullman
13 - Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susannah Clarke
14 - Hunger Games series, Suzanne Collins
15 - Born Standing Up, Steve Martin
16 - The Book of Basketball, Bill Simmons
17 - The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
18 - Samaritan, Richard Price
19 - The Book of Lost Things, John Connolly
20 - Have a Nice Day, Mick Foley
21 - Foreign Babes in Beijing, Rachel DeWoskin
22 - Harry Potter series, JK Rowling
23 - The Post-Birthday World, Lionel Shriver
24 - Moneyball, Michael Lewis
25 - The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, Neal Pollack
26 - Old Man's War series, John Scalzi
27 - The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Sarah Vowell
28 - The Wife, Meg Wolitzer
29 - Karl Marx: A Life, Francis Wheen
30 - The Ballad of the Whiskey Robber, Julian Rubenstein
31 - Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, Michael Pollan
32 - Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
33 - Gang Leader for a Day, Sudhir Vinkatesh
34 - Heat, Bill Buford
35 - The Geese of Beaver Bog, Bernd Heinrich
36 - Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
37 - The Magicians, Lev Grossman
38 - How I Became a Famous Novelist, Steve Hely
39 - The Areas of My Expertise, John Hodgman
40 - Little Children, Tom Perotta
41 - The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
42 - The Columnist, Jeffrey Frank
43 - A&R, Bill Flanagan
44 - The End of Mr. Y, Scarlett Thomas
45 - Bangkok 8, John Burdett
46 - How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, Toby Young
47 - From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden, Amy Stewart
48 - Six Seconds or Less, Jack McCallum
49 - In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan
50 - Stardust, Neal Gaiman

Posted 10:20 PM | Comments (0)

December 31, 2009

Top 50 Songs of the 2000s

This has been the hardest of all my lists to put together. With the death of Top 40 radio and of music on MTV, it's become harder and harder to recapture the rush of discovering a great pop song; what used to happen every couple of weeks now only comes a few times a year. On such a limited supply, it's hard not to OD on the few knockouts when they do come around. I can still appreciate all the songs on this list, but I can't pretend I still love them the way I did when I first discovered them.

While this list includes my most ephemeral pleasures, it's also got more explicit political content than any of my other lists. Notoriously, filmmakers had enormous difficulty crafting their outrage into compelling narrative in this decade. The most successful commentaries were oblique: Guillermo del Toro's fantasy, Alphonso Cuaron's and Ron Moore's science fiction. The one great novel I read about the oil wars, Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan, was, well, absurd, in the tradition of Dr. Strangelove and Slaughterhouse-Five. But the single is all about raw emotion, and as John Lydon taught us, anger is an energy. "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People," "Windowsill," "Let's Impeach the President," and "A Punch-Up at a Wedding" moved me in a way few love songs could in this infuriating decade. And bittersweet tracks like "Crazy," "All My Friends," "Handshake Drugs," and even the sneaky-dark "Hey Ya!" took on extra poignancy.

Does that mean we'll now start hearing more of the music of hope? (Maybe the cast of Glee's revelatory cover of "Dont Stop Believin'"?) Or of diminished expections for piecemeal reform and timetables for withdrawal? (Yet more Black Eyed Peas singles?) I dunno - I can't figure out this pop moment. I approve in theory of Lady Gaga, but can't say she does much for me in practice. I'm still waiting for the next pop revolultion to match hiphop in the 1980s and grunge in the 1990s, but maybe there just is no more center for the margins to storm; after all, these days indie darlings crack the Billboard charts with regularity, and Li'l Wayne went from mixtapes to platinum faster than I could keep up. I can't say that's a bad thing.

1 "Crazy," Gnarls Barkley
2 "Hey Ya!" Outkast
3 "Portions for Foxes," Rilo Kiley
4 "Crazy in Love," Beyonce with Jay-Z
5 "Do You Realize?" The Flaming Lips
6 "Maps," Yeah Yeah Yeahs
7 "All My Friends," LCD Soundsystem
8 "Cavity," Stew
9 "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy," Big & Rich
10 "Ignition (Remix)," R. Kelly
11 "Handshake Drugs," Wilco
12 "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People," The Legendary K.O.
13 "A Stroke of Genius," Freelance Hellraiser
14 "Danger! High Voltage," Electric Six
15 "The District Sleeps Tonight," The Postal Service
16 "Hurt," Johnny Cash
17 "Don't Stop Believin'," The Cast of Glee
18 "Paper Planes," M.I.A.
19 "Over and Over," Nely with Tim McGraw
20 "Windowsill," Arcade Fire
21 "A Punch Up at a Wedding," Radiohead
22 "Let's Impeach the President," Neil Young
23 "Sk8ter Boi," Avril Lavigne
24 "I'm Losing My Edge," LCD Soundsystem
25 "Stan," Eminem
26 "B.O.B.," Outkast
27 "1 Thing," Amerie
28 "Tom Sawyer," The Bad Plus
29 "Stupid Boy," Keith Urban
30 "99 Problems/Helter Skelter," Danger Mouse with Jay-Z and the Beatles
31 "Time to Pretend," MGMT
32 "Take Me Out," Franz Ferdinand
33 "Milkshake," Kelis
34 "Clocks," Coldplay
35 "Go," Common
36 "Dance Till We're High," The Fireman
37 "I Need More Love," Robert Randolph
38 "Get Ur Freak On," Missy Elliott
39 "Oops (Oh My)," Tweet
40 "Bootylicious," Destiny's Child
41 "In My Pocket," Mandy Moore
42 "Don't Tell Me," Madonna
43 "The Thong Song," Sisquo
44 "La La," Ashlee Simpson
45 "Southern Point," Grizzly Bear
46 "Strange Overtones," David Byrne & Brian Eno
47 "Tex Hooper," Norm McDonald
48 "Umbrella," Rihanna
49 "Lovestoned/I Think She Knows," Justin Timberlake
50 "When I Get You Alone," Thicke

Posted 08:55 PM | Comments (0)

Top 50 Albums of the 2000s

Music became less and less important to me over the course of this decade. At the beginning of the 2000s, I was still dabbling in professional rock criticism; by its end, I was having trouble coming up with ten 2009 releases I enjoyed beginning to end.

I know, it's a cliche for old farts like me to stop listening to new music and just replay their golden oldies. But I didn't really retreat into nostalgia; rather, I kept discovering older albums I found more compelling than the new stuff. The three records I've listened to the most in the past few years were all old, but new to me: the Steve Reich Ensemble's Music for 18 Musicians, Joni Mitchell's Hejira, and Orchestra Beobab's Pirate's Choice. I also just spent less time listening to music period. After troubles with vertigo early in the decade, I stopped listening to music while working at the computer, and discovered the virtues of mindfulness over multitasking. While driving, I found podcasts and books on tape more consistently engaging.

I still try as much music as ever - more, actually, since eMusic and Lala make it so cheap to check out new albums. That may be part of the problem - an info glut, in which my iPhone clogs up with dozens of releases to which I never get around to giving more than cursory attention. I bought into the trade-off from vinyl's warmth to digital's portability, and now I wonder if I've shortchanged myself in the process - nothing on my iPhone sounds nearly as good as my vinyl copy of In Rainbows. I'm trying to even things out a little by at least ripping my old CDs uncompressed. But it's hard to give up the convenience of instant $5 MP3 downloads - even when I get the feeling the compression is sucking the soul out of the new Dinosaur Jr. It may be time to go totally analog. If only I could fit my turntable in my car . . .

In any case, I'm clearly out of step with this generation's aesthetics. I grew up on the old-fashioned album as a coherent artistic statement, and I still love the experience of listening to a single record - or, more atavistic yet, album side! - from beginning to end. But when I try to listen to new releases that way, they don't hold up, and I realize the problem's not just them, but me - they weren't built for that kind of listening practice. Bands expect you to pick and choose your favorite cuts, then put your whole library on shuffle. But I rarely find that algorithmic experience satisfying - for me, it leads less to serendipity than to impatience, as I keep wondering if I'll like the next song better than the current one.

I'm sure some of this past decade's music will eventually grow on me. It took me years to warm to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - it wasn't until I heard the live Wilco record, Kicking Television, that I realized how much life there was in those songs that initially seemed so cold. Likewise, I was late to Radiohead because I never liked OK Computer - although when I finally heard Kid A, it grabbed me from the first cut. Maybe a few years from now Animal Collective will similarly speak to me - but for now, even after repeated attempts, I just don't get the fuss, and I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of other listeners feel the same, but are afraid of crossing the Pitchfork mafia. I do see the point of Grizzly Bear and TV on the Radio, but neither band has ever grabbed me for an entire album. Although maybe they would if MP3 wasn't subjecting my ears to continual sonic fatigue.

In this midst of this midlife sonic crisis, there were still a handful of artists who made music I couldn't get enough of. Not only Wilco and Radiohead, but also Hem, LCD Soundsystem, Calexico, and Stephen Malkmus. And Axl Rose, who made the great lost guitar-rock record of the decade. Future generations will rediscover Chinese Democracy for the masterpiece of power balladry it is. Or they won't, and it'll be their loss.

Below, my top 50 albums of the decade. Tomorrow, I'll post a separate list of my top 50 songs.

1 Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
2 Radiohead, In Rainbows
3 LCD Soundsystem, The Sound of Silver
4 Daft Punk, Discovery
5 Beck, Sea Change
6 Hem, Rabbit Songs
7 Bebel Gilberto, Bebel Gilberto
8 Bob Dylan, Love and Theft
9 Badly Drawn Boy, About a Boy
10 Calexico, Feast of Wire
11 M83, Before the Dawn Heals Us
12 Broken Social Scene, You Forgot It in People
13 The National, Boxer
14 Radiohead, Kid A
15 Guns N' Roses, Chinese Democracy
16 The Langley School Music Project, Innocence & Despair
17 Wilco, A Ghost Is Born
18 Loudon Wainwright III, Here Come the Choppers
19 The Cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Once More with Feeling
20 Stephen Malkmus, Stephen Malkmus
21 Norah Jones, Come Away With Me
22 Stephen Malkmus, Real Emotional Trash
23 Hem, Funnel Cloud
24 Wilco, Sky Blue Sky
25 Jayhawks, Rainy Day Music
26 Zero 7, Simple Things
27 Antony and the Johnsons, I Am a Bird Now
28 Nick Lowe, The Convincer
29 Kanye West, The College Dropout
30 The White Stripes, White Blood Cells
31 Arcade Fire, Funeral
32 Fountains of Wayne, Welcome Interstate Managers
33 Jens Lekman, Night Falls over Kortedala
34 Matthew Dear, Asa Breed
35 NERD, In Search Of . . .
36 Stereophonics, You Gotta Go There to Come Back
37 Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
38 Kanye West, Late Registration
39 D'Angelo, Voodoo
40 Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Come Poop With Me
41 Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs
42 Yeasayer, All Hour Cymbals
43 Outkast, The Love Below
44 Lambchop, Is a Woman
45 Various Artists, O Brother Where Art Thou
46 Son Lux, At War With Walls and Mazes
47 Suzanne Vega, Beauty & Crime
48 M83, Saturdays=Youth
49 Randy Newman, Harps and Angels
50 MC Paul Barman, It's Very Stimulating

Posted 05:19 PM | Comments (0)

December 30, 2009

Top 50 Comics of the 2000s

This was a mixed decade for comics. On the one hand, superhero comics rebounded from the "grim and gritty" cliches of the 1990s to newfound creative relevance, thanks largely to the savvy of Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada, who recruited writers like Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Millar, Robert Kirkman and Warren Ellis from the indie world and let them run wild on the Marvel universe. Bendis proved to have the best ear for dialogue in the history of the word balloon, and Quesada oversaw a series of crossover events that actually managed to deepen rather than exploit the mythos.

At the same time, the indie bubble of the 1990s popped, as the entire American comics infrastructure shrank in response to overspeculation, insularity, and new competition from manga and the internet. A new generation of personal artists never emerged to follow pioneers like Peter Bagge, Daniel Clowes, the Hernandez Brothers, Chester Brown, Seth, and Joe Matt. Or if they did, they never made it to my comics shop - which these days is a website, since the three stores closest to me all closed down by the middle of the decade.

By the end of the decade, it appears the industry is finally responding to these transformations. Several of my favorite comics, including Freakangels, Bayou, and PVP, are available for free online (although I still prefer to read them in ink). The early attempt to turn Watchmen into a "motion comic" in advance of the movie was a disaster, but the adaptation of Spiderwoman is much more promising. And the widespread recognition for works like Fun House, Epileptic, and Persepolis suggests the space for sequential art outside the comics ghetto may be growing.

Not that there's anything wrong with the margins. As science fiction began to gain critical respectability in the 1960s and 70s, some SF authors railed, "keep science fiction in the gutter where it belongs!" Similarly, there's a legitimate danger that the recent superhero boom - capped by Disney's purchase of Marvel - will dull the critical edge that Quesada, Bendis, and their cohort worked so hard to sharpen. But with great responsibility comes great power. Hopefully, the new creative opportunities opening up for comics artists will give them the room to explore even fresher visions. The recent explosion of work by the astonishing Warren Ellis for indie publisher Avatar demonstrates what can happen when a writer bursting with ideas wins full creative freedom, and finds the collaborators who can bring his visions to life.

Here's my list of the top 50 comics of the decade. I've lumped together spinoffs like New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, and Dark Avengers, as long as they're from the same writer. I've listed the primary artsists who worked with each writer, using front cover credits to decide whether to include inkers and colorists, and skipping fill-in artists. Foreign comics were considered if they were translated into English in this decade.

1 - Epileptic, David B.
2 - The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard and Cliff Rathburn
3 - Y the Last Man, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
4 - Planetary, Warren Ellis and John Cassady
5 - Buddha, Osamu Tezuka
6 - Stray Bullets, David Lapham
7 - Alias/The Pulse, Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos
8 - Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
9 - Box Office Poison, Alex Robinson
10 - Wolverine: Old Man Logan, Mark Millar and Steve McNiven
11 - Freakangels, Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield
12 - Black Hole, Charles Burns
13 - Desolation Jones, Warren Ellis and JH Williams
14 - Promethea, Alan Moore and JH Williams
15 - Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
16 - The Book of Genesis Illustrated, R. Crumb
17 - Daredevil, Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev
18 - Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel
19 - DC: The New Frontier, Darwyn Cooke
20 - Breakfast After Noon, Andi Watson
21 - Top 10, Alan Moore, Gene Ha, and Zander Cannon
22 - Powers, Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming
23 - New/Mighty/Dark Avengers, Brian Michael Bendis and various artists
24 - Fables, Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham and Steve Leialoha
25 - Fell, Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith
26 - Bayou, Jeremy Love and Patrick Morgan
27 - Hate/Hate Annual, Peter Bagge
28 - Pride of Baghdad, Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon
29 - Kick-Ass, Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.
30 - 50 Days of Night, Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith
31 - DMZ, Brian Wood and Ricardo Burchielli
32 - Northlanders, Brian Wood and various artists
33 - Parker: The Hunter, Darwyn Cooke and Richard Stark
34 - La Perdida, Jessica Abel
35 - Eightball, Daniel Clowes
36 - Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga, Koji Aihara and Kentaro Takekuma
37 - Doktor Sleepless, Warren Ellis and Ivan Rodriguez
38 - Reinventing Comics, Scott McCloud
39 - Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea, Guy Delisle
40 - Conan, Kurt Busiek, Cary Nord and Robert E. Howard
41 - Marvel Zombies, Robert Kirkman and Sean Phillips
42 - Astonishing X-Men, Joss Wheedon and John Cassady
43 - PvP, Scott Kurz
44 - Local, Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly
45 - Mouse Guard, David Petersen
46 - Courtney Crumrin, Ted Naifeh
47 - 100 Bullets, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso
48 - Bonndocks, Aaron McGruder
49 - Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, Brian Michael Bendis and various artists
50 - Dork Tower, John Kovalic

Posted 03:12 PM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2009

Top 50 Movies of the 2000s

As I argue here, this has been the decade of fantasy film, led by Pan's Labrynth, Lord of the Rings, and Spirited Away. It's also marked the return of ribald comedy, led by the auteur of arrested adolescence, Judd Apatow. And it's seen the emergence of a cohort of Mexican directors who bring a new global vision to Hollywood. Childen of Men is to our moment what Blade Runner and The Matrix were to theirs: an extrapolation that tells the truth about right now. Most remarkably, it has the courage to be an SF film that doesn't fetishize technology or violence - a temptation to which both the other films succumb. Instead, we have a hero who holds a baby but never a gun, and that beautiful final scene of a boat at sea, bobbing in the water, attached to no country. (Then, when we're ready for some tech & violence, we can turn to Clive Owen's other classic, Shoot 'Em Up, which demystifies the Hollywood hero by turning him into a live-action Bugs Bunny.)

1 - Children of Men
2 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3 - Best in Show
4 - Pan's Labrynth
5 - Brokeback Mountain
6 - City of God
7 - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
8 - Finding Nemo
9 - The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
10 - Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2
11 - Rivers and Tides
12 - Spirited Away
13 - Memento
14 - The Aristocrats
15 - Requiem for a Dream
16 - Mulholland Drive
17 - Grizzly Man
18 - The Bourne Trilogy
19 - Bad Santa
20 - The Girlfriend Experience
21 - The Wrestler
22 - The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
23 - Ratatouille
24 - Knocked Up
25 - Wall-E
26 - Startup.com
27 - About a Boy
28 - Old School
29 - Control Room
30 - Little Miss Sunshine
31 - In the Realms of the Unreal
32 - Down with Love
33 - Bend It Like Beckham
34 - I Heart Huckabee's
35 - Sideways
36 - Moulin Rouge
37 - Lost in Translation
38 - Shoot 'Em Up
39 - The 40 Year Old Virgin
40 - Casino Royale
41 - The Barbarian Invasions
42 - Hustle and Flow
43 - Crank
44 - Dodgeball
45 - Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
46 - School of Rock
47 - Sin City
48 - Borat
49 - Zoolander
50 - American Dreamz

Posted 06:50 PM | Comments (0)

Top 50 TV Shows of the 2000s

This was the decade in which TV became America's most exciting creative medium. When the most compelling auteurs were not filmmakers, but showrunners like Joss Wheedon, David Simon, David Chase and Matthew Weiner. When fandom became a matter not just of accepting the limitations of a mass-produced format, but celebrating the novelistic possibilities of serialized storytelling. When hundreds of channels meant, at least some of the time, true diversity. Even as the music industry tanked and the movies got bigger and dumber, TV - at least the best TV - got smarter. How long it'll last is up for grabs. But this decade has at least demonstrated that there's an audience out there for great weekly storytelling.

Below is a list of my favorite TV shows of the decade. For shows that started in the 1990s (like Buffy), I only considered the episodes that ran in the 2000s.

1 - The Wire
2 - The Office (US version)
3 - Lost
4 - Chappelle's Show
5 - Lucky Louie
6 - Breaking Bad
7 - The Colbert Report
8 - Battlestar Galactica
9 - Mad Men
10 - Top Chef
11 - Flight of the Conchords
12 - 30 Rock
13 - Big Love
14 - Deadwood
15 - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
16 - The Gilmore Girls
17 - Insomniac
18 - Generation Kill
19 - Project Greenlight
20 - Sex and the City
21 - Futurama
22 - Curb Your Enthusiasm
23 - The Sopranos
24 - The Daily Show
25 - Undeclared
26 - Dollhouse
27 - True Blood
28 - Hey Monie
29 - The Powerpuff Girls
30 - Parks and Recreation
31 - The Amazing Race
32 - The PJs
33 - Project Runway
34 - Pardon the Interruption
35 - Weeds
36 - CMT Crossroads
37 - No Reservations
38 - Best Week Ever
39 - MXC
40 - Cover Wars
41 - Human Giant
42 - Michael and Michael Have Issues
43 - King of the Hill
44 - Celebrity Poker Showdown
45 - Ultimate Film Fanatic
46 - Beat the Geeks
47 - World Poker Tour
48 - South Park
49 - Yo Gabba Gabba
50 - The Guild

Update: Somehow I forgot Generation Kill in the first generation of this list. It's been added, and World Series of Poker was dropped.

Posted 12:42 AM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2009

Fall Classes

Here are links to the syllabi for my two fall classes, Comparative Studies in Emerging Media and Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Posted 08:25 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2009

Vertigo

Here's my final Flow column. It's about Buddhism, Jung, and critical theory.

Posted 07:43 PM | Comments (0)

August 07, 2009

Myth, the Numinous, and Cultural Studies

Here's my latest FLow column.

Posted 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2009

Twitter and Iran

Here's my latest Flow column, "Tweeting the Dialectic of Technological Determinism."

Posted 12:34 AM | Comments (0)

Manifesto for Centaurs

My new essay, "The Politics of Magic: Fantasy Media, Technology and Nature in the 21st Century," is now online at Scope.

Posted 12:30 AM | Comments (0)

May 07, 2009

Jung and Lost

I know the blog's been silent for a while, but I have been writing a column for Flow, an online media studies journal. The latest is "Jung and Lost", on the value of Carl Jung's ideas for understanding contemporary popular culture. You can also check out "Strat-O-Matic and the Baseball Tarot: Sense and Synchronicity in Sports and Games" and "The Play Paradigm: What Media Studies Can Learn from Game Studies."

Posted 05:54 PM | Comments (0)

March 06, 2008

Gooden and Strawberry Update

According to Bob Klapisch, Daryl Strawberry has found peace and contentment as a Mets hitting instructor and advocate for autistic children. Doc Gooden, on the other hand, is apparently still struggling with his demons.

I can still remember watching Strawberry during batting practice at Shea shortly after his rookie callup, in 1983. Only 21 years old, he had a dazed look in his eyes, as if he wasn't exactly sure how he'd ended up in New York City. That expression went from vulnerable to hangdog over the years, as the fans turned on him, mockingly chanting "Darrr-ylll" in a Nelson Muntz singsong. Like Michael Jackson, Linsey Lohan, or Britney Spears, he grew up in public. When it falls apart for somebody like that, I find it hard not to, well, blame the public, myself included - hey, I may not read Perez Hilton, but I do watch Best Week Ever, which launders celebrity rumors just as newscasts launder Matt Drudge's political snark.

In the classic Simpsons baseball episode, the opposing fans go into the "Darrr-ylll" chant when Strawberry steps to the plate. A teammate comments that Strawberry's a professional, so it'll roll right off him - then we cut to Strawberry, a single tear trickling down his face. I always thought that joke held more truth than we fans would like to admit. (Actually, that whole episode is worth rewatching - remember Ken Griffey's "grotesquely swollen head"? In the show, it's caused by drinking too much of a Springfield patent medicine, but after all we've learned about the changes in Barry Bonds's hat size, it comes off a lot differently today.)

Some people just aren't built for the media glare. From George Foster to Ed Whitson to Chuck Knoblauch to Roberto Alamar to Jeff Weaver, many established vetrans come to New York and wilt. I guess that means they "don't have what it takes," compared to the heroes with icewater in their veins, like Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera. But every player - every person - is a bundle of strengths and limitations. Jeter doesn't have great range at short. Mo can't get through a season any more without a few trips to the DL. And some players just don't click with the hyperactive media culture of New York City. (I guess I can relate - I lived in NYC for one year after college, then hightailed it to grad school in North Carolina.) Those players probably just shouldn't play in markets where dozens of reporters hound you after every game when you're just trying to clean up and go home - just as righthanded pull hitters like Don Baylor probably shouldn't play in a ballpark that's 430' to left center. Paul O'Neil, a lefty who thrives under pressure, was a much better fit.

Savvy management maximizes its players' strengths and minimizes their weaknesses, while keeping its eye on the long term. But Strawberry and Gooden were just squeezed for everything they had, future be damned - Doc's arm was never the same after he'd pitched a boggling 35 complete games by the age of 21.

Stawberry told Klapisch that he helps autistic children because they "have that pain in their eyes that I can relate to." I think that's the look I saw in Strawberry's eyes back in 1983. I'm so glad to hear that after years of injury, addiction, and a battle with cancer, he's finally in such a good place. And when I hear about Gooden, I feel sorry - and guilty.

Posted 10:09 AM | Comments (0)

March 05, 2008

Peter Gammons Leans to Obama

From Gammons's ESPN Insider blog:

"The Angels know who they got in Torii Hunter -- a man who drips energy and preaches hope and potential. There are numbers that will quantify what Hunter is or isn't worth, just as there are politicians who try to tell us that "experience" is far more important than the foundation of hope and potential. Those numbers don't matter as much as Hunter's ability to energize and inspire his teammates, with character that cannot be quantified."

As an Obama fan, I'm tickled, but I'm perturbed to see him equated with an aging, overpriced outfielder, however much of a mensch Hunter is. Who does that make Hillary - maybe an uninspiring sabermetric fave like Jack Cust?

Posted 04:55 PM | Comments (0)

March 05, 2007

New Spin on Apple's Classic "1984" Ad

This amateur Obama ad isn't really fair to Clinton, but it's pretty funny if you know the original.

You can read my essay on the original "1984" ad here.

Posted 04:40 PM | Comments (1)

September 08, 2006

Pop Culture 2.0?

It's the end of an era. Two of the most influential figures in American pop culture were fired this week: Tom Freston and Robert Christgau. Freston, who was head of Viacom's cable networks, was one of the key executives behind the rise of MTV. Christgau is the self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics," the writer who redefined the rock canon away from the populism of the mainstream music press, and toward what he sometimes called "semipopular music."

Freston got canned after the MTV Music Video Awards continued their ratings freefall this year, while MTV's web offerrings got their clocks cleaned by "Web 2.0" social networking juggernauts MySpace and YouTube. Christgau got axed after the Village Voice was sold to an alternaweekly chain desperately trying to compete with craigslist's free classified ads.

The old frameworks for making sense of pop culture are starting to collapse. Pop's presumed market of scarcity - only a handful of songs can make it to heavy rotation, only a handful of artists can become stars - is being overwhelmed by an information explosion. On MySpace, thousands of local band listings sit side by side with Paris Hilton promotions - and Paris needs the locals more than they need her. No one indie band has the reach of a pop star, but it's the community they've built that brings eyeballs to Paris's page. Meanwhile, viewers are tuning out TV channels and becoming their own programmers on YouTube.

The demassification of American popular culture continues. Every year, the big networks lose ground to cable, while the big cable channels lose ground to the profusion of newer digital channels. The big record labels' sales shrink, while the global jukebox becomes available on all-you-can-download subscription services like Rhapsody. Radio listeners abandon terrestrial's shrunken playlists for Sirius and XM. "The Long Tail" grows ever longer.

Which explains not only Freston's departure, but perhaps Christgau's, too. When the mainstream dissolves, how do we define the margins? If there's no longer such a thing as pop, how can there still be punk?

Christgau himself was never an indie snob - he's always had the open-earedness to praise a big star like Garth Brooks if he thought the music earned it. And I'm sure he'll land on his feet - some smart publication should grab him for some instant hipster credibility. Freston, I'm not so sure about, although I'm confident his parachute was much more golden than Christgau's. But the real question is what comes next.

Pop Culture 2.0 no longer needs a lowest common denominator. Traditional media companies are always out to score a blockbuster, because it's so much more efficient to sell one product to one million customers, rather than a thousnd products to a thousand customers each. But to MySpace, it's all the same. They make their money off ads, and a million pageviews is a million pageviews, no matter how they're sliced up. In fact, better they be a thousand different pages with a thousand viewers each - all the more room for growth. Finally, the economics are on the side of cultural diversity.

That doesn't mean they'll stay that way. I'm sure that Fox, which bought MySpace, would love to see it simply replace MTV as pop's top tastemaker. But I doubt we'll ever again see the kind of teen monoculture I lived through in the 1980s. There's just too much cool stuff out there to listen to. Christgau's the one who taught me that. And now everybody's figuring it out.

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