1987, My Best Year in Music (Music Archive #4)

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For those of you who have looped in here since July of this year, I will warn you that I occasionally do month-long projects of posting and discussing a song each day on a single theme or topic. You’ll find that I take these pretty seriously – perhaps unusually seriously. You’ll notice a couple of things about my posts during the month:

a) I go into a LOT of detail about the song, artist, and culture surrounding them. I curate these projects like collections of art (which I believe they are), so if you like reading descriptions next to paintings, then you should enjoy my approach.

b) I share videos, not just songs. I grew up in an era when MTV ruled our collective consciousness, so for me the video is often as important as the song itself. I know that Spotify-minded folks may have a difficult time with this, but I ask you to consider watching the videos for the full impact.

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80s in July (Music Archive #3)

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I was reflecting recently that people who didn’t grow up in the 80s have settled on just a few go-to music videos for understanding the early 80s look and sound, but there’s so much more out there that I wish they could experience. It’s not just Take on Me and Africa.

So I’m going to be exploring 31 of what I consider to be the iconic videos of the 80s that have become somewhat forgotten. Make sure you watch, because the videos are absolutely as important as the songs.

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39 Years in 39 Songs (Music Archive #2)

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Note – This entry from 2013 is the most personal of these lists. If you’re interested primarily in music history, this may be one to skip. But if you want to know more about me or if you are generally interested in one person’s life journey as expressed through music, read on.

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I have decided to begin a new Facebook song-a-day project. This one is going to be more personal than prior projects, because it is going to attempt to convey the story of my own life in song. It’s also going to be slightly longer than the one-month limit I’ve put on previous projects, because I am going to be posting one song per day for each full year of my life, ending on my birthday. That’s 39 years as of this November 20th. (I was originally going to do this for my 40th birthday, but I decided I didn’t want to be starting the project around the time of my wedding, so…39 it is.)

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A Month of Protest Songs (Music Archive #1)

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Note – This is the first archive of my “song-a-day month” posts from my personal Facebook page. My first ever effort to do such a list of songs was in December of 2011, largely in response to social media discourse I saw regarding the Occupy movement. Although that particular protest movement turned out to be short-lived, it absolutely laid the groundwork for future organization in the decade that followed. Also, I have to mention that my political views – partially in response to increasing fascism – have only drifted further leftward. My comments for this list feel downright mild to my older eyes.

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As the Occupiers face more and more government interference, as popular support for their movement begins to wane, I thought it was important to have a renewal of purpose. I decided that for the month of december I would do another song-a-day project, but this one will be a month of protest songs. We need to remember why protest matters, not only on this issue but on many important issues. Democracy does not begin and end with voting; it is maintained through the constant exercise of our voice and will.

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Ep IX – The Treatmenting

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About a year ago, my Star Wars Book Club decided to have some fun and create our own fan treatments of what we would have done with an Episode IX of Star Wars. All of them were different, because we each took widely varied approaches – from “hit similar themes” or even “very slight script doctoring” to “do whatever the hell you want” – but we enjoyed them much more than the often-confusing retcon that was The Rise of Skywalker.

I have not previously shared this treatment outside of the book club, because mine is EXTREMELY inside-baseball, loaded with references to books, series, and games across the Star Wars canon. But given the recent JJ interview in which he admits that “having a plan probably would have been better” (OH REALLY JJ?), I want to show you that it isn’t even necessary to have a trilogy-crossing plan. All it takes is trusting other Star Wars creators and giving their additions the respect they were due.

And if you don’t like my treatment, I bet you would have liked at least one of the others. Or make your own. I bet I’d like it better than JJ’s. Anyway, here we go with the opening crawl:

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Deep Thoughts 9

~ Eric ~ 1 Comment

In which I overanalyze my reactions to my first ever full watch-through of Deep Space 9

I have always had a bit of a sideways relationship with Star Trek. I think that Undiscovered Country, not Wrath of Khan, is the best of the O-Trek movies. I don’t mind Generations and Insurrection as much as everyone else seems to. And I tried to get into DS9 when it first aired, but it just did not grab me.

Of course, I found out later that the first two seasons were widely considered the weakest, so I was willing to believe people who called it “the best Trek,” even though I hadn’t seen it. Finally, during quarantine, I settled down and did a marathon watch straight through (with one exception, as noted below) of every episode in all seven seasons.

Those who are familiar with my reactions to media will not be surprised that my take on the show is very different from popular opinion. My favorite parts of the series are not the things most people cite, and I do not share the positive opinions of the aspects most people tout as its highlights.

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Imagining a Spectrum of Masculinity

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Much of the discourse around modern understandings of gender identity, gender expression, biological assignment, sexual attraction, romantic attraction, et al. revolves around the idea of a spectrum. People may try to represent such spectra as scales, grids, Venn diagrams, or even layer cakes. I hear generally positive things about the Gender Unicorn, but I am also a bit wary because of how often these kinds of things are thrown up on the internet with no research or vetting. (Here’s a hilarious article deconstructing a few such diagrams.)

Yet there is value even in flawed representations because of the conversations they generate. They may need to be improved, but their very existence may inspire someone to improve them. And in the meantime we expand our visual and verbal vocabulary for discussing these important concepts of identity, which is always a positive. I believe that increased vocabulary brings increased clarity of communication and thought.

But there is clarity we’re missing, particularly in the category of gender experience and expression.

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Characters We Love and the Creators Who Don’t

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Several of the fandom arguments I’ve seen recently are more similar than they seem at first, not just because of how they express (though that is also important). They are similar at what I believe to be a root cause level, and it has to do with my favorite subject – subconscious biases. In this case, the subconscious biases belong to the authors/creators.

In this article, I’m going to be arguing about base axioms, which is dangerous ground. I’m not going to say that one is inherently better than another, but simply to state my personal preference and (here’s the sticky part) that the other causes the exact problems we see in audience reactions to certain fandoms.

With all of that dancing around out of the way, let’s get to the discussion.

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Art and the Privilege of Community

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Have you ever heard someone talking on a podcast about a playgroup or local gaming community and you think, “Wow, that area sure has a lot of great game designers in it?”

That’s no accident. But the causal relationship doesn’t quite go the way we often think it does when we hear these conversations.

It’s not that there is one great game designer who teaches other people around them to design. It’s not even that several great game designers happened by chance to be in the same place at the same time. You see, great game designers are everywhere, but the ones we notice are the ones who have the backing of a social network.

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Managing Expectations, or Why I Didn’t Like Your Favorite Con

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I’ve been thinking hard about how I want to approach this subject. It’s extremely important, but it’s also a little touchy, because I’m going to be talking about not enjoying things that my friends continue to enjoy. The last thing I want to do is come across as trying to persuade people to dislike something they love. I’ve explained in other contexts in the past that that’s never a useful approach.

Instead, I want to examine how expectations and priorities change how we view something – in this case conventions – and why that’s important for organizers, participants, and attendees in how they communicate about them.

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