Alexx's Journal

Kestrell asked me to OCR an academic article for her, from a pretty poor quality scan. It required major corrections, including typing whole sections from scratch. But in between the correct results and the utter nonsense... was often weirdly oracular-sounding snippets. The text transmogrified, commenting on itself in new ways. It's kind of like the Burroughs/Gysin cut-up technique. I've included some selections below. (Bonus points if you can identify the subject of the original essay.)

... of the things lie item … In prism M 'Sum S (of course). I exit … Ills body …"ghostly Iran,’ lilt … (q I Palms 1973.23).
… upon bearing his musk … poke box crushed in record pres while retreating from a wearily guard … After concealing hit new … behind a helmet mink … both of which lie Audi ... costume for quail-’Gothic' performance… ironic sake for Window … idling Leah …
… aa wed as sardonically fanciful … Tint vast nirhtar of dwirrin here … the doing adolescent, … Ills •puce-age Gothic costume … becomes moss visibly … without any hitman presence. It Anally cornea to rest ui ... the ringing voice ...
…dr Maui target wafer … entertain tent … who limin' the products most craved l»y (irons … As nutter of fun, (lint wine of … reality of (lie … reining number of [record company) … mid to lute '70 … a corporate monopoly oil forms of luminu, … a taco-Baroque … Ms Opera (dr WITH 1974)- In the end. loathe resulting silence goes … hit company …
… in this Aim. so much to thai the redaction of al Me to image Instead of substance becomes a bade ingredient … Underlying Swan's obsessive dines 10 …’he gave up waging* to be come … (de Palms 197). 74 and Prolopic). …
…(dr 1‘Jnni 1974) The costumed Window … keep arm—dating … the tape now being mode … every apace within … (which Window finally arts afire) …
…Leroux's neo-Gothic tense … de Maw's … staged aeries of sacrifice … many mnero haw (aped everything cite (dc MOM 1974)
The moM desired solution … withal of rebellious adolescent creation … in a nay … is to br sotted in… by the very mews and nnn … moat grotesque characters and unapt … (which he trim to burn up) … cite ironies …
… a brood social portrait … at the time of chin Aim…

I have recently become mildly obsessed with the YouTube channel of Dr. Jackson Crawford, a scholar who for the last couple years has been spreading knowledge of Old Norse mythology and culture in brief, informative mini-lecture videos. There’s videos on sources, specific myths, topics of general interest, and language and pronunciation. The videos link to each other, and to other sources, forming a massive hypertext corpus in bite-size chunks.  Crawford is an engaging speaker, and (essential to any good scholar) is willing to correct his mistakes, and to admit when he doesn’t actually know something.

 He also has a good sense of humor, and is clearly engaged with 21^st Century culture. I was particularly tickled by the video Canon, "Fanon," and Variation in Norse Myth. He also refers to some later sources as “Medieval fanfic” of earlier ones. Indeed, his first go-round with internet-fame was back in 2010, when he wrote Tattúínárdǿla saga, a mock-scholarly work about the Icelandic  sagas that George Lucas based Star Wars upon. More recently, he’s recorder a couple versions of The Cowboy Hávamál, the classic Norse work of advice on life, translated into the idiom of a cowboy in the American West.

 Whether you’re new to Norse Myth, or want a deep dive into details, he’s got a lot worth seeing. Very Highly Recommended.

 (I miss Kali…)

I spend a *lot* of time providing on-the-fly descriptive tracks for Kestrell. In that time, I have gotten great utility out of a technical term I picked up from Buffy scriptwriters, "Baitcam". This describes the frequently-used shot where the camera starts looking at the protagonist and/or potential victim from behind concealing foliage, usually from the middle distance, implying that something dangerous is hiding in the bushes. (There usually is, but sometimes it's just a fake-out.) This is, as you can see, complex to describe, but sufficiently quick to establish visually that it's very handy to have shorthand for it.

After the third time in a week that I found myself pausing a video to say: "They're doing that thing with the protagonist in the middle distance and suddenly an indistinct outline figure dashes across the camera in the foreground," I decided I needed a new piece of shorthand. After some thought, I decided that "Forezoom" did the job nicely, being evocative, and only rwo syllables.

Having used it successfully for a month or so, I've decided to share it with the world :)

Recently, Kestrell and I watched a related pair of movies: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) and the film it is a remake of, Bedtime Story (1964). The comparison was FASCINATING.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has been a favorite of mine since I first saw it in its original theatrical run. Michael Caine and Steve Martin play a pair of con men who cross paths, compete, cooperate, and then compete harder. Glenne Headley enters the film about halfway through as the ingénue that they compete over. Barbara Harris has a small but delightful part as a mark early in the film.

When I first saw Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, I wondered if it was a remake of an earlier film (in those pre-Internet days, it was nontrivial to find out). Though my film knowledge was not encyclopedic, I had seen enough movies starring David Niven to recognize that Michael Caine was obviously imitating him in his performance. And, indeed, the original movie, Bedtime Story, did turn out to star David Niven. What I was NOT expecting, was that Steve Martin’s performance turned out to be significantly informed by that of – Marlon Brando! As near as I can tell, Frank Oz (director of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) made a deliberate choice to “keep everything that worked” from Bedtime Story when remaking it. It’s pretty clear that both leads studied the performances of the original actors.

This attitude of “keep what worked” applied on a script level as well. Something like 50% of the dialogue is VERBATIM the same, and even where it isn’t, the majority of the action is the same. Sometimes this goes so far as to use the same staging and camera angles.

I don’t want to give the impression that Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a carbon copy. Indeed, I would say that it is a MUCH better movie. Not that Bedtime Story is bad, but the remake improves it in almost every way. What’s fascinating is that the degree of similarity is close enough that you can see lots of places where Bedtime Story COULD have gotten a laugh (or a bigger laugh) and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels DID. You could use these two films as a master class in film comedy – and the art of the remake.

I had an interesting realization the other day, after watching some stuff with Kestrell. As you know, Bob, Kestrell is blind, so I do a descriptive track of the action. Over time, I was noticing a pattern of flaws in my descriptive tracks. Some characters, I could not identify by name, but only by their plot function. And the vast majority of those characters were women.

At first, I was embarrassed by what I thought was an expression of my own subconscious gender bias. And there may be some element of that indeed. However, after some more thought (and discussion with Kes), I realized that there was a significant element of fault in the media themselves.

Female characters are consistently NAMED far less often than male ones. A female character will get named during a proper introduction, just like a male character – but in subsequent conversation, her name won’t be used and his will. Since it takes me three or four repetitions to actually remember the name of the character, I am far more likely to know the name of a male character than a female one, even when they get the same amount of screen time.

Does anyone reading this know someone in a Women’s Studies department who might be looking for thesis material? My own “findings” are strictly anecdotal, and running actual numbers on this would be way too much work for me, but I bet there’s some interesting numbers to be run…

So, I was watching a cartoon from 1944, Swooner Crooner (link is a brief excerpt), and it featured a trope I didn't think went back that far: that of fangirls screaming and fainting at the presence of famous musicians. I was familiar with it from The Beatles and Elvis, but had no idea it went back to "Frankie" Sinatra and his generation. So how far back *does* it go?

(One could argue for the Bacchantes being the prototype, but I'm looking for more early 20th / late 19th century examples.)

I said some of this in conversation recently, and thought the analogy worth expanding upon.

He produced a great deal of work in genres and formats that were widely considered to be lowbrow, disposable entertainment for the lower classes. Most of his work wasn't

collected during his lifetime. Shortly *after* his death, some of his literary disciples started getting his work collected and reprinted, marking the start of the genre and form being seen as (at least *capable* of being) "literature".

Some of his political attitudes are not in fashion today, which some readers can't get past. And he had stylistic quirks (including a fondness for long words) that are easily parodied (and arguably became self-parody in his own lesser works).

Of his prodigious output, about the top 5% consists of enduring classics, works that influenced *everything* that came after them in their "home" genres, and had considerable influence even outside those genres. The next, say, 10% of his output was also very good, though not quite *as* enduring as the first-rank material. After that, the work ranges from "good" down to "wretched".

Although only the cream of his work is widely influential, devout fanboys of his work (starting with his first reprinters) have been completists, including everything they could get their hands on, indiscriminately. This has inadvertently led to a dilution of his mass appeal. People often hear great things about his work, but are then exposed to (sometimes quite large) pieces of his work that is not at all impressive. This is, IMO, why so many people are willing to say, "I'm not a fan of his stuff", even if they generally like the genre he helped make respectable. I believe they *would* be fans of his if they read his best works, and avoided the vast sea of mediocrity around it.

[Of course, countless arguments could be made about *which*, exactly, the best works are. But if you compiled a list of many people's opinions, I don't think many people would put works in the top tier that anyone else thought weren't at least second-tier.]

I once had a conversation in which I drew a few comparisons between Shakespeare and Neil Gaiman. While there's still some validity there, when I look at the *whole* of the description above, the name Jack Kirby leaps out at me as the Shakespeare of superhero comics.

Saturday was the annual 21st Century Party. Most of it featured playing of Artemis, which Tom had requested I get set up in the living room. It's a great multiplayer co-op computer game, where each player takes on the role of a bridge officer on the starship Enterprise Artemis. It's an impressive achievement, and really captures the core fantasy quite well. There are still some bugs and kinks to work out, but it's already great fun, and still under active development.

Sunday morning, I did some final polish on my Sandman paper, and got it uploaded. If you read the last version, you'll be happy to know that it now has a Version History at the end that lists new stuff since last time.

After some thought, I decided that, rather than try and sell it in a traditional fashion, i would make it freely available, and just put a Paypal button on it. After all, I could never have completed it in the first place if lots of other people hadn't freely put the efforts of *their* scholarship on-line.

That said, I figured it was worth publicizing a bit, so I sent out announcements to a bunch of major geek news sites, in the hopes that they will link to it. No posts, as such, yet, but Neil himself has tweeted it, calling it "Astonishingly well-researched". That got me some readers, one typo correction, and (so far) two small donations. From this small sample, I infer that French speakers are generous, as one of them came from France, and the other from Quebec. This sort of cross-continental interaction seems *very* 21st century to me!

"I’m going to tell you a story about llamas. It will be like every other story you’ve ever heard about llamas: how they are covered in fine scales; how they eat their young if not raised properly; and how, at the end of their lives, they hurl themselves – lemming-like- over cliffs to drown in the surging sea. They are, at heart, sea creatures, birthed from the sea, married to it like the fishing people who make their livelihood there."

"'We Have Always Fought': Challenging the 'Women, Cattle and Slaves' Narrative" by Kameron Hurley

(h/t james_nicoll)

Neil gives good lecture. (Tough crowd; he doesn't get a laugh until 17 minutes in...)