Over the last 10+ years Stephen King has not only proven to be one of the more prescient literary figures, but also the coolest. He’s been on social media talking smack on the shitstorm that is American politics for the last 10+ years without any fucks to give. Rock, not rot!
Where are all those literary critics turned up their nose at this badass for the last 40 years now? Anyway, the following clip from NowThis has King talking about his Trump-like character Greg Stillson from the novel Dead Zone.* It’s a quick, fun watch.
This is pretty timely because after getting close to finishing The Shining diorama (coming soon,!) I have been thinking about taking a scene from David Cronenberg’s brilliant adaptation of Dead Zone (1984). I ‘d been toying with trying to figure out how to do the scene where the hockey kids fall through the ice into the pond, but that might not only be impossible but also go over like a lead balloon here in Trento.
The other idea I floated by the recruits that will be imported from Canada to help me with this one is getting the shot of Greg Stillson on stage right before he has his political career-ending (even life ending) child shield moment.
Something like this shot of victory
Another idea I have been thinking about is a scaled-up version of the following shot that has the gun on the Newsweek cover with a cigarette burning in the ashtray.
Thinking through a scaled-up version of this shot to fill-up the window, maybe at an inclination to create a sense of depth?
Luckily I have a month or two to mull this one over before work starts on what will be the third diorama for the bavastudio. Another thing, I should probably share this post with my guest curators to get their feedback given they will be doing the heavy lifting 🙂 Fortunately, this provides the perfect excuse to re-watch one of my very favorite films yet again.
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*For those readers who know Andy Rush, can you see the resemblance between him and King? It’s not just the healthy hair, even the mannerism and the way of talking.
If you didn’t know any better you might think this post was shaping about to be a deep rumination about the nature of this blog, as Martin Weller did so well the other day. But, alas, no need for that because this was, is, and always will be a b blog, and to re-enforce that fact let’s dig into the 10th episode of the Family Pictures podcast, “Father Knows Death,” wherein we discuss the 1987 b-movie gem The Stepfather.
If the idea of watching a much younger Terry O’Quinn of John Locke fame from Lost playing a homicidal maniac is not enough to entice you, how about an allegory of the Reagan 80s that was arguably the birth of the right-wing conservatism that we are currently witnessing go off the rails in the US? We got it all on the Family Pictures podcast, we’ll feed your pop culture hankerings while also educating you about the fall of cultural empires; it’s junk food for the soul.
“But wait a minute, who am I here? Ahhh, Jerry, Jerry Blake.” That’s the line from this film that really ties the room together. Our protagonist goes from family to family and identity to identity trying to reproduce the ideal Leave it to Beaver scenario from the 1950s only to be disappointed time and again. But rather than coming to terms with the impossibility of his retrograde conservative vision he instead leaves a blood mess in his wake as he continues his futile quest—the political allegory coming together for you now?
Robbie Conal’s popular political protest poster from the 1980s: “Reagan/ Contradiction”
As Robbie Conal‘s Reagan/Contradiction guerrila protest poster from the 1980s points out about Reagan, at the heart of Jerry Blake’s conservatism is the contradiction of enforcing family values with violence (at home the war on drugs and abroad the Iran-Contra Affair amongst others). In his 2009 essay for AV Club, Scott Tobias writes about the contradiction at the heart of the “Reagan Revolution” in his 2009 essay on this film:
Coming seven years into a Reagan Revolution that attempted to turn back the clock of American culture, The Stepfather presented Jerry as the perverse face of family values, a proudly “old-fashioned” guy who still watches Mr. Ed, talks about real estate as “selling the American Dream,” and goes so far to protect his stepdaughter’s purity that he confuses a goodnight kiss for attempted rape. Throughout the film, Jerry tries to impose his reactionary ideals onto a family—and if you count those he’s murdered or will murder, families plural—that can’t function within those tight parameters.
It’s worth noting that Terry O’Quinn’s performance is absolutely brilliant, and it’s safe to say without it this film would have most likely been forgotten. But the stars aligned and the film became a cult classic because of that performance, what’s more it opened up the opportunity for pop culture as critique of a moment in the moment. As The Stepfather argues, it’s the kids who see through the hypocrisy of the conservative adults. This may explain why youth subcultures like punk and hip hop were such strident responses to the reactionary politics of the 80s, crying out against deregulation, a growing police state, and eroding public services. B-movies like The Stepfather use the rise of that turmoil and violence as a form of entertainment to not only critique that 1950s family mythos, but also underscore the deep contradictions at the heart of the conservative family values that when taken to their logical end over the following 40 years would result in more and more families unable to afford the basics like shelter, food, and clothes on their back. How does that benefit that mythical family unit? Where is you “City Upon the Hill” now, Mr. Reagan?
I love the bit in the 1984 documentary Another State of Mindwhere various figures, including Keith Morris of the Circle Jerks, talk about the generational struggles around the idea of family and what it means to live in the Reagan 80s.
Just six years after The Stepfather the rise of the aggrieved white male that has become the template for the MAGA man can be seen in Falling Down (1993)
MBS makes a great point during our discussion suggesting where The Stepfather goes to great lengths to suggest how deranged this conservative vision of the 80s has become, just 6 years later the template for the proto-MAGA man, namely Michael Douglas in Falling Down (1993), is championed. The idea of excessive, random violence as a justifiable reaction to changing times highlights a potential shift in the vision of Hollywood. To be fair, it is just one film from the early 90s, albeit it has taken on cult status, so we would have to dig deeper to make any sweeping statements about Hollywood. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting referent point that MBS argued well.
The teacher from First Born could have very well been another Jerry Blake for all we know.
In fact, I think the whole point is that MBS and I are start to find our legs a bit with this podcast. We’re more comfortable with one another and as we talk about more films together we gain more insight into each other’s tastes. What’s more, with each new episode I have yet another movie to compare to First Born (1984), which has become my mission in life 🙂
For our 9th episode of the amazing Family Pictures Podcast we waxed on about the 1984 hit Karate Kid. Did you know Karate Kid was directed by Rocky‘s John Avildsen? Makes sense when you think about it given Karate Kid is just a re-make of Rocky set in California with karate replacing boxing. This is just one of the many deep insights you’ll get from this cutting-edge, truly innovate film podcast that will be sure to blow your mind and pay your mortgage, so like and subscribe for more!
One of the things I’m learning as MBS and I find our rhythm is how much film is about the power of place for me. The ways in which a film offers a portal into a place never gets old. Karate Kid captures a particular slice of California in the 80s which is a world I was obsessed with as Long Islander. To put things in a bit of context, I was a skateboarder and a wannabe surfer (my older brother was the real surfer) and if you were into these subcultures in 1984 then California was the center of the world. My older brother took a trip out to Southern California around this time and came back with stories from the promised land reporting scenes of Steve Steadham doing a backside boneless followed by Neil Blender doing a lein air at the Del Mar Skate Ranch—the stuff of Thrasher magazine legend for a 13 year old kid on the other side of the world.
The great Steve Steadham doing a backside boneless over a channel
But to be clear, if you want to see early 1980s skateboarding culture at its rawest then pop in a VHS tape of the Bones Brigade Video Show or Skate Visions —both also released in 1984.
In retrospect Karate Kid has a different take on the golden land of opportunity, it starts by showing a Newark kid forced to up and leave the East Coast to move to LA. Almost immediately Avildsen dispels the magic of Southern California. It was lost on 13 year-old me, but post-19 year-old me who moved to Long Beach in 1990 would relate deeply with each re-watching of the film. The spaces deeply resonate.
So like with my First Born post, although a little less over-the-top, I took some screenshots that capture these Southern California spaces that were both a draw for a 13 year-old me and a bit of a wake-up call for a 19 year-old me. Continue reading →
As I finally catch-up on blogging, it’s time to turn to the Family Pictures Podcast which is now available on Apple’s Podcasts and Spotify as we get into the double-digits of episodes. “We’re mass communicatin’!”
I’m three episodes behind* so it’s time to get back on the horse because MBS and I are cooking with gas! Let me start catching up chronologically, which just happens to be a personal favorite: Michael Apted‘s First Born (1984). As MBS points out in the podcast, Apted took over the reins of the British documentary series Up which “follows the lives of ten boys and four girls in England, beginning in 1964, when they were seven years old.” Right before filming First Born Apted was finishing up the third installment of the series, 28 Up, which is considered by many critics a masterpiece.
As MBS astutely notes in the episode, Apted’s coming off this formative experience on the Up series following kids for 21 years which had to inform the way he approaches what is a remarkably authentic look at a 1980s suburban kid’s world. I essentially swoon over the production design of this film, and I’m pretty blown away by how accurate the film is at depicting the details of growing up in the mid 80s in the tristate area, everything from Def Leppard jersey shirts to lacrosse practice to Drake’s Cakes to the pre-posh mall experience to specific place mats and coffee cups you might find at some department store from that era—the devil dogs are truly in the details of this film.
As I mention in the podcast, this film has become the go-to show and tell for my kids to illustrate what it was like to grow up in a household of the 80s, right down to the Sony Walkmans, handheld games, and kitchen cabinet raids that were part and parcel of my growing up. Apart from the storyline (which is another take on family in the 80s) the film almost seems like a Frederick Wiseman documentary of a middle class suburban home from the tri-state area in 1984. Also, I have to believe the details were more localized in the 80s before the advent of gigantic box stores like Wal-Mart, Target, and their ilk that ensured no region of the US was distinct from another. For example, the multiple pizza parlors that populate any given town in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut had their own deco and the ways in which those spaces are highlighted in this film might be an argument for its greatness.
Screenshot from First Born highlighting a 80s Pizza Parlor in New Jersey that is featured in First Born. This film is all about the spaces.
Anyway, you can check-out our discussion in the YouTube video above or, as mentioned earlier in the post, subscribe to the podcast on Apple’s Podcasts or Spotify. In fact, we have two fun episodes since we recorded First Born that dive into Karate Kid (1984) and a personal favorite The Stepfather (1987), so this is post is truly in catch-up territory.
But I’m not done yet. In fact, the reason this post took so long to write is because I wanted to include the numerous screenshots of the moments in First Born that provide more concrete evidence of this authentic, documentary approach the film takes to 80s suburbia in the NY metropolitan area. I thought it would be fun to provide a running commentary of these images, if only for me and my begrudging children—this is the Family Pictures Podcast after all. Continue reading →
In the things I learned today department, a high schooler named Antonio dropped by bavastudio. He was grooving on the old video games in the space, and as it happens he’s a bit of an retro gaming geek so we had a lot to talk about.* There is nothing cooler than kids that dig so deeply into something that their passion for the topic becomes palpable. Oddly that vision of today’s youth is too often buried because the checked-out teen is both a lazier and easier vision to prop up.
Splash screen of the ostensible made-up video game Polybius
Anyway, while I was showing him the collection of 1980s games he asked me if I knew about the urban legend tied to the game Polybius. Admittedly I had not, and he went on to tell me about a story from the the early 80s wherein the US government was experimenting on young kids viz-a-viz a videogame called Polybius. Presumably the game was a way to measure the addictive effects of this relatively new medium. The cabinet was only introduced in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon for just about a month before it entirely disappeared without a trace.
The game was popular to the point of addiction,[2] with lines forming around the machines and often resulting in fights over who would play next. The machines were visited by men in black, who collected unknown data from the machines,[2] allegedly testing responses to the game’s psychoactive effects. Players supposedly suffered from a series of unpleasant side effects, including seizures, amnesia, insomnia, night terrors, and hallucinations.[3] Approximately one month after its supposed release in 1981, Polybius is said to have disappeared without a trace.[1]
He also turned me onto a 2017 documentary about this legend called Polybius: the Video Game that Doesn’t Exist. Turns out it’s a thing and I first learned about it today in my makeshift arcade from a 15 or 16 year old Italian named Antonio that’s obsessed with retro gaming. That’s the world I want to live in.
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*I shit you not, the kid said to me “I really like your aesthetic.” He’s fucking Italian and talking to my stupid American ass about aesthetics in English. I am useless.
Continuing to build on our #blogging4life theme at Reclaim Hosting, I have the pleasure and privilege to follow-up my discussion with Audrey Watters last month with another discussion about writing, blogging, and life with the ever-inspiring Kin Lane. Kin is never short on wild ideas, like starting a church of digital identity to use the protections of those organizations for the realities of our new cyber flesh.
Kin Lane is a writer, storyteller, and forever recovering technologist. If you’ve heard of his name before, you probably know Kin as the API Evangelist, covering the technology, business, people, and policies of APIs. Kin lives in New York City with his wife Audrey, and Rottweiler Poppy, while continuing to make technology more transparent and visible via his stories, artifacts, and tooling published on API Evangelist.
A few months ago I had the opportunity to chat with Jesse Friedman (WP.cloud) and Ronnie Burt (Automattic) about hosting WordPress on the Impressive Hosting podcast. The conversation quickly turned into a romantic reflection on the long history of our work with WordPress in higher ed. We were all early advocates for WordPress Multisite, and the opportunity to reflect on that work was refreshing. Jesse was a most gracious host, and it sounds like Ronnie and I lived parallel lives for years as WordPress Multisite admins for higher ed.
The endless possibility that abounded in the future past of the world of WordPress has been a bit dampened lately by erratic leadership. That said, I have to imagine trying to juggle such an extensive for-profit organization alongside the open source project, while keeping the lights on for both, can’t be easy. Unfortunately the world of speculative finance is often at odds with the principles of open source, and I’m wondering if the financial chickens have come home to roost.
Regardless, it’s worth remembering all the projects that still depend upon WordPress and all the great work still happening. Feeding too much into the cycle of drama doesn’t benefit anyone, least of all those on the ground trying to get the work done that billions of users have come to depend on. Open source isn’t free, but it’s also not a business in the ways touted over the last 15-20 years. Open source needs to be a sense of commitment, not unlike democracy, but what we’ve seen is the erosion of these principles as scale-driven capital moves in. This is pretty basic, I know, but I’m trying to move beyond the mud-flinging details of any given drama to understand how we re-think the cancerous ideas of growth and commodification that tend to ruin most of the spaces we inhabit online.
I lost my father last week. I’m just now trying to emerge from the fog of that loss. I have a very big family, and checking out for more than a week and being able to spend time with those closest to me has been a great solace. Probably the greatest comfort was the wake, a Catholic ritual quite popular on Long Island (and I imagine elsewhere) in which the dead body is on display in a casket for friends and family to gather around to say their last goodbyes and share stories. If you have seen The Sopranos you have a sense of what I’m talking about.
A scene from the Sopranos featuring Tony preparing to pay his respects at wake
It’s a tradition I grew up with, and while it has become a bit of an industry, the occasion to grieve publicly together is quite powerful. The ritual provides a sense of closure that might otherwise be elusive, and in the face of death even the mightiest of materialists has to struggle with the great unknown of the hereafter.
The Sopranos wake scene featuring the father Intintola in between meals at a parishioner’s home
Anyway, as I was working with my brothers and sisters to prepare the services, I was asked to come up with something for the Requiem Mass at the wake, a time allotted by the priest for folks to share stories and eulogize the deceased. I had been asked to do the same thing for my mother almost twenty years ago when she passed, but I was a complete mess so that never happened. I’m sad it didn’t because trying to reflect on a life in words while those emotions are still quite raw is a therapeutic complement to the requiem. So, below was my brief eulogy that was crafted to encourage others who came to share their own stories, but more on that anon. For now, here is the eulogy:
My children might be shocked at the idea of my speaking publicly given after ten years in Italy they’re conditioned to believe I should only ever speak inside the house. When I’m out and about in Trento and I start uttering my trademark terrible Italian, I immediately hear “Dad!” and their fingers go to their lips and their eyes signal desperately for me to stop talking. So right now they must be beyond themselves, but I just want them to know: “I have a voice too and I want to use it!” Aren’t dads supposed to embarrass their kids?
More seriously, let me start by saying thank you to everyone who has come tonight to pay their respects. Interestingly enough, our father—for reasons not entirely clear to us—spent a fair amount of his adult life attending wakes across Nassau County. In fact, I’m sure if at all possible he’d be more than happy to trade places with any one of you right now ? Alas, that’s not meant to be, this will officially be our father’s last wake.Â
Thinking more about his gravitation towards wakes, I wonder if he had been preparing himself for this day all along? Maybe the loss of his own parents was the impetus? I wonder if attendance helped remind him of what’s truly important in this life? Or maybe, just maybe, he was drawn to all the stories that get shared by friends and families.Â
While I can’t say for sure why my father attended wakes so regularly—he wasn’t one to share his innermost thoughts and secrets, to be sure—right now I truly appreciate that a good, Long Island wake provides a welcome opportunity for each of us to share a story about the deceased.Â
Stories are how an ordinary life, like our father’s, becomes extraordinary. Stories capture his sense of humor, his idiosyncrasies, and most importantly a deeper and clearer sense of the soul we’ve lost. In the end, the stories we tell and hear about our father will not only be a celebration of his life, but a much welcome coping mechanism. With each tale comes a memory and with each memory a manifestation of the man.
So, as you might have guessed, we’re going to relate some stories and memories about our father to round out this eulogy, and we encourage those of you who have one to do the same.
Let me start, I remember going on a field trip with my father when I was in middle school. He never talked about his work at home, all we knew was that he was a teacher. But it was on this field trip to Caumsett Park that I saw a whole different side of my dad. He was taking his class on a hike through the park identifying plants, trees, and, his specialty, birds. He was not only knowledgeable, but he was also entertaining. He would identify a bird, discuss a few of its characteristics, and then, without fail, find a way to tie one of the bird’s traits to a student in his class. They loved the whole thing. It was such an effortless gift of his to teach through humor and playfulness. It’s something my father could do so well that I have been inspired by ever since.
From there my brothers and sisters, along with grand children, shared stories, many of them quite entertaining. The healing power of storytelling should never be underestimated. But the grand finale was two of his students from the 1980s at Lynbrook Middle School shared how much my father meant to them. One anecdote that was particularly powerful was how he would have nicknames for all of his students, and the gentleman sharing noted his last name was Renz, and my father called him “Renz-a-lot” and his younger brother in the grade below “Renz-a-little.” It’s hard to articulate how amazing it was to hear this unsolicited story. My father’s playful use of language to connect and commune was at the core of his very best qualities, and having the opportunity to remember this while surrounded by friends and family was a true gift. He will be missed, but I can rest assured that my children have heard the stories and they will now know to only relate the most flattering of tales at my wake 🙂
I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit troubleshooting a streaming setup in bava.studio for Madden 2001. I’m going to capture some of my various failed attempts below so I don’t repeat the errors:
Tried RetroPie with AV/RCA run through AV->HDMI convertor that forces 4:3 into YoloBox. After that, monitor HDMI out was converted from HDMI->AV into CRT TV. Worked decently when enabling Settings –>Program Out in Yolobox, but the latency effected game play.
Tried RetroPie with HDMI splitter to YoloBox and 27″ CRT TV that’s run through an AV to HDMI convertor forcing 4:3 ratio. This looks good on the YoloBox, but it is vertically rectangular on the TV with black bars to right and left. The image on the TV looks better when 16:9 is pushed from RetroPie in the Retroarch configuration. Alternatively, when I force 16:9 at the AV -> HDMI convertor the TV looks perfect (no black sidebars) but image on YoloBox is stretched.
Tried Batocera using an Elgato HD60X box but ran into the issue that when I went from USB-C out of the HD60X with USB 3.0 -> YoloBox the Batocera image wouldn’t resolve. I finally thought to go USB-c out of HD60X and USB-C -> YoloBox, and while image from Batocera resolved, when trying to play a game you are pushed back to the menu.
Tried Batocera using an Elgato HD60X box with USB-C -> USB 3.0 into Mac Mini running OSB and that worked perfectly.* [Scratch head]
Tried Batocera HDMI out -> HDMI splitter with HDMI -> YoloBox and HDMI converted to AV/RCA -> CRT TV. This was the simplest setup yet, and will it blend…YES! Figured out that auto video settings out of Batocera into YoloBox gets me closest to what I want. This setup is HDMI out of Raspberry Pi 4b into HDMI splitter. First HDMI output from splitter runs into HDMI -> AV convertor that goes into RCA plugs on CRT TV. Second output is HDMI -> YoloBox.
Ironically, this was the simplest setup and it worked best. Part of why it works is Batocera builds in a buffer on left and right sides of the screen for 4:3 ratio (a background image with the sides of a PS1 console), which makes output to YoloBox less stretched—although it squeezes image on the TV a bit. That said, since it’s highlighting an image of the original Playstation’s circular Power and Open buttons it’s more tolerable. More importantly than any of that, I can’t waste another minute on OCDing over this.
Note bene: Madden 2001 audio source from HDMI should be around -20 to -17 dB when mic audio is at 0 dB.
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*To be fair this was on a 27″ 4K LG monitor, so it doessn’t really count for the CRT theme of this post.
Tomorrow at 1 PM Eastern on ReclaimTV I will be talking with Audrey Watters about her career as a writer on and off the web. I can’t think of too many people who’ve made as big an impact in edtech in such a small amount of time as Audrey. There’s almost a BHE (before Hack Education) and AHE (after Hack Education) in the field; she was a harbinger of the extraction and exclusion apparatus of the web that was the seemingly inevitable result of the heady days of Web 2.0.
Audrey’s critiques are deeply rooted in deconstructing the mythos of the web by looking at who, why, and, most importantly, how these narratives were framed. Her work is tireless and more often than not her voice and research are more akin to an investigative journalist than edtech blogger. Her broader focus was (and still is) always already social justice, which was often aimed at re-discovering a sense of equity and empowerment that so many of the major networks on the web compromised through algorithmic distortion, extraction, and surveillance. Being so right so early is never easy, and the moniker she earned as EdTech’s Cassandra, while playful, highlights the mythic burdens of seeing so clearly.
In tomorrow’s discussion I hope to engage Audrey in a discussion that tries to trace an arc of her brilliant career, focusing on how her writing as a blogger, investigative journalist, and, ultimately, historian and scholar developed in relationship to the web that was often the fulcrum of her critique. Hope you can tune in tomorrow to hear Audrey’s take on all of this and more, I know I am excited.
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