Category Archives: Uncategorized

FAVORITE FAN VID

This isn’t really my favorite Fan Vid. But I’m promoting it because it’s the only fan vid I can find about Community, which I started watching last week thanks to Sofia, and am now slightly obsessed. The vid’s interesting because it says more about this particular viewer’s fandom and what he/she gets out of the show than the show itself, its tone, or genre…but anway…here’s the vid

I’ve done a little more searching for community vids and there are one or two mediocre relationship vids on youtube. they’re not really worth posting.

Keeping up with the Quidditch Media/ Fan Frenzy

POST IN PROGRESS: This is a collection of links to external sites from both before and after the Quidditch World Cup, held on November 13th and 14th 2010. Its purpose is to begin to understand the vast range of fan reactions and perspectives held towards the budding sport/ activity/ event/ or as you will.

BEFORE THE EVENT

http://techland.com/2010/11/11/this-weekends-big-sporting-event-the-quidditch-world-cup/

The sport going collegiate?
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=mccluskey/090722
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131144212

AFTER THE EVENT

Best Articles So Far
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2031655,00.html
http://techland.com/2010/11/13/quidditch-world-cup-diary-day-1/
http://techland.com/2010/11/13/quidditch-world-cup-diary-day-2/
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2031655,00.html

THE scatterplot! Statistical graphs analyzing the final Middlebury v Tufts game, and other games. Quidditch taken as seriously as other sports:
http://nyunews.com/quidditch/games/93/

A great collection of photos of the event
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimkiernan/sets/72157625270643861/

Student Papers
http://www.tuftsdaily.com/mobile/holy-snitch-tufflepuffs-stun-quidditch-community-finish-second-at-world-cup-1.2405900

Decent Recounting of the events. But perhaps most interesting for their comment sections. Some can get critical in non-scholarly ways.
http://www.slashfilm.com/quidditch-world-cup-winner-crowned-york/
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/11/quidditch_world_cup_1.html

Doubtful and negative but supporting
http://www.toplessrobot.com/2010/11/middlebury_won_the_quidditch_world_cup.php

Some video, photos, more explanatory than condescending, but verging on condescending. Negative comment or two.
http://backporch.fanhouse.com/2010/11/16/fanhouse-tv-quidditch-world-cup-takes-manhattan/?synd=1

Strictly condescending. I didn’ find it funny. It’s a video playing off snatch (in a sexual sense) and snitch and how they sound a like. Interviewer purposely selets nerdy looking kids to interview.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAMcZdXFB-Q

Burlington News Station interviews some Midd Champs after Win. You get to hear some players’ take on the sport’s significance.
http://www.wcax.com/Global/searchresults.asp?vendor=ez&qu=quidditch

Explanatory with explanatory video. Generally unproductive back and forth comments, then become more interesting. My favorite comment: This sport may cause a rip in the very fabric of the nerd-jock continuum.
Another I like: I am a geek & I think it looks completely dumbass, as does every geek I personally know. These cretins are making geeks look bad.
And another: Worse than LARPing…
http://www.slashfilm.com/fourth-annual-quidditch-world-cup-coming-york-city-weekend/

Interesting b/c one student says that in going to the event she was hoping for more nerdom and less athleticism.
http://www.dnainfo.com/20101115/midtown/middlebury-takes-gold-at-midtowns-quidditch-world-cup

Mean
http://filmdrunk.uproxx.com/2010/11/middlebury-wins-quidditch-world-cup

Middlebury Road Trip Blog 2010
http://middquidroadtrip.wordpress.com/

Excited college student
http://media.www.alestlelive.com/media/storage/paper351/news/2010/11/18/Opinion/Quidditch.Keeps.College.Students.Young.Destressed-3960235.shtml

A Middlebury Mother Reacting to the Event, found in the Middlebury Campus
http://www.middleburycampus.com/2010/11/17/midd-quidd/

Quidditch (not about World Cup) as an activity much more tied to Harry Potter
http://www.dailyiowan.com/2010/11/18/Metro/20139.html

Response: Lesage is in her 70s!?!

Okay, so maybe that’s not an actual picture of Julia Lesage. Throw in a laptop spinning off some Flashforward on Hulu and a Tivo and it might as well be. Did anyone else go, “Say what!?!” when she said, “…I am intrigued that the series is training me in proper cult fan behavior, a new trick for me at age 70.” Age seventy? Excuse me! That completely shattered my expectations of who you is, girl! I was picturing you as a platinum blonde with curly hair, thirty-five and a bit too sexy considering your technological know-how, criss-crossing your legs over my desk. But 70? Let’s talk about your viewing habits for a second. You’re using Tivo on a regular basis, whereas I’ve never owned one, operated one–Have I seen one?– not that I wouldn’t be able to figure it out right off the bat. I think that’s the difference Julia is underlining–that those supposed younger norms do not come naturally to her, whereas they come easily to us millenials. What’s interesting is that it’s not only the millenials. Our parents and grandparents have also adapted. They’ve changed their viewing habits, some better than others, and those who do perhaps have a competitive media advantage. Call it modern something darwinism or survival of the most willing to sit at his computer, or what you will, but this isn’t just a younger generational thing anymore. It may start with the younger generations, but it’s truly pervading through all of society.

Response: 6 reasons why Gossip Girl was frustrating to watch

This response to to the following article: Gossip Girl article

1. As of yet, the series ongoing question, “Who is Gossip Girl?” is only answered by the annoyingly prissy refrain, “That’s the only secret I’ll never tell.” Maybe it’s because I have only seen the three episodes screened in class, which all had central plot-lines about the Gossip Girl network, but I found it hard to believe a show could continually withhold this type of narrative knowledge from its viewer and not incur viewer wrath/ indifference. I personally grew sick of it after three episodes. The fact that the third episode puts the question on hold by proposing, “We are all gossip girl,” that was paraphrased– made me just want to take a baseball hat to my head and whack it a few times to get a head-start on the brain cells I’d be losing by continuing watching. In other words, I don’t find the meta-commentary about the show’s fans gossiping as well to be deep enough to merit the unanswered narrative device. That’s reason #1

2. Why is every main character caucasian and then all of Blaire’s cronies asian, african-american, tibetan, etcetera? In wanting to produce a show about New York’s rich, they made the assumption that all main characters had to be white and yet still felt a need to fulfill an ethnicity quota? I don’t live in NY and I didn’t go to a prep school anywhere, but even if it is as inaccurate as I’d presume, such a segregated aesthetic is vomit-inducing. Again, maybe I’m misrepresenting the show due to my lack of narrative knowledge, but why not make all those ethnic cronies seem more like people, humans, friends, instead of symbols? That’s #2

3. Seeing a room of twenty twenty-something year old actors all pretending to be teenagers answering a text simultaneously… makes me hate the presumed image of our generation, “millennials” and how we are being recorded in history on so many levels.

4. The fact a gorgeous blonde in a perfect red dress is told by another gorgeous blonde girl that she would look “even better in the black dress,” when they are both already gorgeous blondes on TV shopping, and the fact that this is a culminating moment supposed to build their budding friendship, all makes me want to find my trusty baseball bat again and make good use of it.

5. That the “loner” is just as preppy as all the other characters and is let into the inner circle in the pilot episode and never really epitomizes lonerness because his real narrative purpose is to fake represent lonerness to gain viewer sympathy, so the viewer can live vicariously through the lucky fake fake individual.

6. That I secretly enjoyed the show and found it way too engaging.

My Response to all your responses! HAhaHaHAha

…there are some who got a little pissed off about all this, because, among other things, Not everyone can have a book published and not everyone can be on television, but blogging is amongst the [edit] ways to present one’s work and ideas to the masses. Yes, I’m a flip-flopper [cut] but man…Who’s stealing from Whom»??? I don’t think you can be much more direct than Fuck you, Joss Who the hell has time for this, no one wants to see the these two agendas [edit] are [cut] incompatible.Okay, so maybe this is an exaggeration, but money needs to be made. I stand by it as my opinion. We are holding the industry hostage.

I’m guessing this makes as much sense as some vids without seeing their source text. I’m not sure if I, the author, see any coherence in it either, but I thought it would be fun to steal a little bit from all of you and unify you and make you me.

READING: Something to Talk About…

In reading Francesca Coppa’s piece on Musical Literacy in Vidding, she mentions that Bonnie Ratt’s “There’s Something to Talk About” has been remixed more than any other song. Being that we just saw the On A Boat vid of all its remixes, I said to myself, “Hey, that would make a creative blog post! Why don’t you remix all of those videos into one awesome remix video!” But then I remembered that I probably should not be spending 10 to 20 hours on a single blog post.
Even so, I made the effort to go and watch parts of a half a dozen of them. What I noticed is that there are certain remix trends. There was a Yugioh remix video, there was a House slash vid exploring latent homosexuality, there were other vids that turned non-lovers into couples, i.e., a lot of what we’ve seen in other vids. If these vids are not necessarily innovative in their content, what makes thm work? I a lot has to do with the rhythm matching of the music and to the visuals on screen. For this song, in particular, I think the lyrics are essential because they easily permit visuals to be contextualized into a story. Their speak of distance, standing close or being far apart (I’m forgetting the exact lyrics) are ideal to explore character relationships, building and breaking apart. I’ll link some of the vids so you can check them out and come to your own conclusions.

Slash Vids

Yugioh

Fictionalizing heterosexual relationships