Weekend Assignment #341: Overexposed - The Vampire Vexation

For Weekend Assignment #341: Overexposed, I fully expected that people would mention being sick to death of politics right now, what with the midterm election imminent across the U.S. but that's not the thing I'm tired of. Back up, though; let's start with the question:

Weekend Assignment # 341: Overexposed

Some things (or people) explode into the culture, are really big for a while and then overstay their welcome. Who or what are you really tired of seeing, hearing or reading about these days?

Extra Credit: What discarded bit of pop culture do you remember fondly?

It's nothing in the real world I'm particular sick of, neither problematic politicians nor pubescent pop stars, nor even drug-addled divas. No, I need to rant for a bit about that fictional subculture of life-deprived men and women whose idea of a nice meal out is a large quantity of A-pos: the vampires.

I've never been a vampire fan, although I probably dressed as one once in some long-ago Halloween. I'm never read Bram Stoker's work. I found Bela Lugosi's most famous film (excluding Plan 9 From Outer Space) mildly diverting and briefly thought-provoking, but it's nothing I'd watch again. I think. I tried to watch Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killera once at Halloween, and suffered through about half an hour before turning it off. And I've never seen Nosforantu. There's a 1979 version of Dracula for which I've basically only seen the ten minutes Sylvester McCoy was on screen, saying his three lines. So no, not much of a vampire fan.

Buffy with Spike, the most entertaining of vampires.

When Buffy the Vampire Slayer came to theaters, it certainly didn't sound like something I'd enjoy, so I initially ignored it. Even when it came to television, I wrongly assumed that the goofy sensibility of that title announced a lowbrow character blundering her way through a send-up of a genre I didn't like in the first place. It wasn't until Season 6 of Buffy that I found out how wrong I was. After checking out a few Season Five episodes in rerun, John and I started seriously watching the show. We bought the DVDs and enjoyed the heck out of them, and Angel as well, although the spinoff about hunky vampire Angel and friends ended very badly. On the day the cancellation of Angel was announced, actor Danny Strong, who played Jonathan on Buffy, inadvertently reenacted on of his scenes with me, asking if I was "Karen with a K" when giving me his autograph.

Not all about the vampires: ex-demon Anya in the terrifying bunny suit, 

and Giles (Tony Head) with his chain saw. "Fear Itself,"  

Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Buffy was a great, great tv series, and Angel was mostly a very good one. But it wasn't because the two shows contained vampires. Joss Whedon built up a whole culture and cosmology around his version of the creatures, from their place in the demonic pecking order to the handy way they turn into dust when staked. But that wasn't ultimately what the show was about. It was about the difficulties of growing up, life and death and doing homework, alienation and friendship and the power to make a difference. More often than not, the vampires and other monsters were metaphors for some real-world problem. But none of that would have mattered had the show not been populated with a large ensemble of great characters, humans, vampires and none of the above, interacting with a modern sensibility and sharp, witty dialogue. Great stuff.

But the lightning that was Buffy could not be captured in a bottle. To take one of the least interesting aspects of that show, the vampire legend, and retell it in movies, several different tv shows and innumerable books is to dilute and cheapen the concept, making it even less appealing to the non-fan. On the big screen even before Twilight, we had Van Helsing and that vampires-vs.-werewolves movie Underworld and sequel(s). On the small screen there's True Blood in the U.S., full of mildly interesting characters continually ruining their lives; in the U.K. there is Being Human, with mostly the likable vampire, werewolf and ghost trying to have semi-normal lives and ultimately failing, plus a show called Demons featuring a young, alienated scion of the Van Helsing legacy. In books there are several mashups of Jane Austen with various monsters, a demon-hunting Queen Victoria, and lots of beautiful young detectives (or waitresses, or whatever) who either love vampires or are vampires themselves, with a few Slayer wannabes thrown in. And if these new books on the fantasy and YA shelves don't have vampires, they make do with zombies or werewolves.

Frankly, by the time Twilight became ubiquitous as bestselling books and movies, I was so sick of the whole thing that I never gave the franchise the chance. What I've read or heard about Edward and Whatshername does nothing to entice me.

So to tv producers and book publishers, here's my plea: don't you think this vampire glut, and by extension the zombie glut, has reached the point of diminishing returns? Can we have something else now please? For example, I have this series of books about a tengrem and his friends....

And discarded pop culture? Well, I was a Star Trek fan before Star Trek came back the first time, and a Doctor Who fan before Doctor Who came back for the second the third times. These days, with Doctor Who going strong and Star Trek having wrung every drop pf Trekkie goodness from itself before drying up, only to releaunch as a rather good film with a new cast, I'm really rather satisfied at the moment!

Karen

Weekend Assignment #273: Music(ians) of Your Life

Michael Jackson's death inspires this week's assignment.

Weekend Assignment #273: The death of Michael Jackson has provoked a huge reaction, much of it from people who grew up listening to his music. Is there a particular musician whose work has particular meaning for you?
Extra Credit: What is your personal reaction, if any, to the death of Michael Jackson?

From Michael Jackson vigil Tucson

I vaguely remember the Jackson 5 cartoon show, and listening to Ben on the car radio; so I guess you could say I grew up with the music of Michael Jackson. When I worked for McDonald's in 1979-1980, I remember proposing my opinion that Michael Jackson would benefit psychologically from being made to work anonymously at McDonald's for a month, to get some idea what the real world is like. I still believe that premise, that a celebrity who creates an artificial world around himself to the exclusion of the real world only exacerbates any self-destructive tendencies. John always said that a celebrity who has survived fame and come out psychologically healthy could do a good consulting business helping new celebs avoid the all-too-common pitfalls of drugs, ego, and money issues. A few years later, as an employee of Buzzard's Nest records, I sold a heck of a lot of Thriller LPs and cassettes, and listened to the promo copy daily for a while. I later listened to our promo of the Jacksons LP Victory, but was less than impressed by that one.

But really, I was never a Michael Jackson fan. I'm a little annoyed that my favorite cable station, MSNBC, has been pretty much hijacked by coverage of his death over the past 24 hours and counting, and that some interviewees have placed his cultural importance above that of Elvis or the Beatles. Fair enough, though: he broke the color barrier on MTV, was hugely influential in the fields of rock/pop, dance and fashion, and fascinated the public almost as much with his tragic life and death and bizarre behavior as because of his music. And we are now in the world of Twitter and texting and 24-hour news cycles. This sort of thing is probably inevitable, if not quite reasonable. (What about Iran? What about the energy bill? Isn't anything else happening today?)

Thursday evening I left the constant Michael Jackson coverage behind on tv and headed to Reid Park with the dogs. As we passed the rose garden, I saw more people there than was usual for that time of day. That's when I noticed the four trucks from three local Clear Channel radio stations in the parking lot, soon joined by news trucks from two tv stations.

More people started arriving in the rose garden, and sure enough, the gazebo was soon draped in KRQ banners. A trio of people stood with white party balloons, on which they had written in Sharpie. "I LOVE YOU, MICHEAL" was one of the things written on them. Ah. of course. As we left, someone had just addressed the crowd about having gotten his single parent mom to buy him a tape of BAD. Then they played the song Thriller, which is still stuck in my head. Darn it.

It was a typically diverse Tucson crowd - black, white, Hispanic, kids and baby boomers, man and women. Nobody was crying, or seemed particularly upset. At least one guy in his forties was standing just outside the rose garden with his young family, a vinyl LP under his arm. But the few words I heard as I walked by seemed to be about a trip to a local casino.

I have to wonder what December 8, 1980 would have been like given 2009's technological zeitgeist. I will never forget the death of John Lennon, whose murder provoked a similar reaction but in less high-tech terms. John Lennon and his three chums from Liverpool have been a significant part of my life since 1964, a hundred or a thousand times more so than Michael Jackson. I did a project on the Beatles' music for school in 1973 or so, spent high school collecting their albums, drove across town to get a McCartney LP the day it came out, wrote to Yoko after her husband's death, and eventually saw Paul and Ringo in their respective concerts in Los Angeles in the 1980s. I was a record store owner-manager when John died, and handed out free buttons in commemoration the next day. (I think I've written about this part of it before, so let's move on.) John Lennon's death was as sudden as Jackson's, and more extreme, horrible and unforeseeable in its circumstances. And like Michael Jackson, John Lennon was a complex and interesting person in his public persona.

But that's not strictly relevant to John Lennon's musical impact. I'm not one of those Beatles fans who idolize Lennon and discount the other Beatles' contributions. Paul McCartney was and is at least as talented. They complemented each other musically, and pushed each other to collaborations that were better than anything they each did alone. George was no slouch, and Ringo did his part; each deserves more appreciation than they get. But without John Lennon, I doubt that we'd all know and appreciate his friends to the extent that we do, even today. He was the one who put together the band, and instigated many of the Beatles' musical and technically innovations. 45 years after their breakthrough U.S. tours, what John, Paul, George and Ringo did still matters.

How about you? Did you grow up listening to Elvis, the Beatles the Jackson 5, New Kids or Nirvana, or someone else entirely? Tell us about your all-time favorite in your blog, and don't forget to link to your entry in the comments below. (Also, please link to this entry in the entry you write, okay? Thanks!) I'll be back next Friday (probably earlier in the day!) to recap the results, thus:

For Weekend Assignment #272: Here Comes Summer!, guest professor Carly and I asked you to describe your summer plans. Here are exceprts from the responses:

Julie said...

Vacation? What's that? Oh, I could use a few days off, but it ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

We're so swamped right now that getting away for more than a weekend is problematic. And even then it's a weekend combined with something else, like a convention appearance for me or a bowling tournament for Chris.

Florinda combined this assignment with the previous one (to describe your town or city) in her entry:

School is out for the summer now, and families will be looking for ways to keep the kids busy until it starts back up again a week or so before Labor Day. My family is no exception. The summer days in Simi Valley can get very hot and dry, but thanks to low humidity, the nights are usually pretty comfortable. However, my husband doesn't have a high tolerance for the heat, despite having lived in Southern California all of his life, so we tend to seek out air-conditioned indoor activities during the day. We'll be going to the movies a lot, or staying in to watch DVDs. This year, we want to try to make one or two trips to the beach - the nearest one is only about thirty miles away - and to use the neighborhood swimming pool. Simi Valley Town Center is an outdoor mall, so if we have shopping to do on really warm days, we'll probably go to the indoor mall in neighboring Thousand Oaks.

Mike references his own recent vacation that kicked off his summer:

Well, as you can see from my last few posts, we've already taken our summer trip. We went to Walt Disney World to see the parks and sweat as much as possible. It was a good time! That is not the norm, however. This year was our first big vacation since we had kids. (Our son is seven by the way). Jenn and I have done little weekend trips on occasion, but this was the first time we went all out on a family vacation. And, based on the cost, it's a good thing we waited this long. I need to find a place that gives the best price for plasma donations, any recommendations?

That's it for now! I'm rushing off to do a photo shoot for later tonight, but will be making the rounds properly over the next day or so - this time for sure! As always, I'm looking for suggestions for future Weekend Assignments, but at the moment I'm especially looking for participants to write the entries. Thanks!

Karen

My View of the Big Game

Maybe it's stubborn or perverse of me, or both, but I have never watched a Super Bowl game. On rare occasions I've turned it on for the halftime show, or let it play in the next room in case a commercial sounded interesting enough to take a peek. But most years, forget it. The only thing that tempted me at all this year was the prospect of Keith Olbermann being snarky in the pre-game show; but Keith being snarky about sports isn't remotely as interesting as him being snarky about politics.

So the tv set was still off when I took the dogs to the dog part at 4:44 PM MST. The dog park was somewhat sparsely attended, but not anywhere near deserted. When I got home, John was watching some raunchy anime thing on DVD. That's how much he cares about football.

In fact, the first and last football game of any description that I ever sat through was in about 1964, give or take a few years. I was in elementary school. My dad took us to a Syracuse University football game at the old Archbold Stadium (1907-1978), and informed me that some of the teams past and present players (e.g. Jim Brown) were a big deal. Depending on the year, that particular team probably included Floyd Little, and may possibly have had Larry Csonka, whom my dad generally referred to as "Zonk." I had very little idea what was happening on the field, and frankly, I've learned very little about football since then.

It's a little disconcerting, being at odds with the prevailing American culture. It is pretty much assumed that everyone watches the Super Bowl. The pizza places have specials; Safeway has its party trays; Madison Avenue prepares its commercials. Even priests and preachers consider whether to include The Big Game in their sermons. John drove past a church today that was having a tailgate party. For me, though, the pizza specials sounded pretty good, but the rest left me cold. Is that good or bad, or, more likely, neither?

As I write this paragraph it's just past 3 AM, and I have no idea who won. It's impossible not to know, given that some people at church were practically bouncing off the sacristy walls about it, that the Arizona Cardinals were playing, and it was "a Cinderella story," blah blah blah. Fine. If I apply myself, I can remember the name of the other team, but I had to think about it. What I do know is that someone on Twitter thought a certain play was "one for the ages," and that Bruce Springsteen sang "Glory Days." Good for him.

I hope everyone enjoyed the day: the football and the snacks, if you like that sort of thing; or whatever you did instead. Personally, I read The Mislaid Magician or Ten Years After: Being the Private Correspondence Between Two Prominent Families Regarding a Scandal Touching the Highest Levels of Government and the Security of the Realm, and enjoyed it very much. Tomorrow, of course, I'll have to work twice as hard on accounting homework, but it was worth it. My only problem was that I read Pride and Prejudice at roughly the same time as the previous volumes in the series, and thus had trouble remembering whether certain plot elements were Austen's, and which were from Wrede and Stevermer. I may have to reread all of the above sooner rather than later. Too bad fictional nineteenth century England isn't likely to be covered on the CPA exam!

Karen